Our First Christmas

At any given time of the year Christmas always seems so far away. Then, all of a sudden the days fly by and Christmas comes at you full speed. Our Christmas season ended up playing out differently than we had planned, but all in all, things turned out great.
We packed up the car and went to my parents' house on Tuesday evening. Christmas Eve we took it easy and helped get things ready for Christmas. We decorated a gingerbread house, wrapped some gifts, and did some last minute errands. My parents' church had a beautiful service that night. After church, we came home and my mom had some treats she put out for us to enjoy before we opened our Christmas PJs.
On Christmas morning, my Dad was up when I got up around 4. He was brining and smoking the turkey. We sat up and watched A Christmas Story (24 hour marathon on TBS!) and waited for everyone to wake up. It ended up that we had to wake Joe and Grannie up so we could start opening presents. Everyone had a great Christmas. Joe asked for tools. I've decided tools are not very fun to shop for, but I'll have to get used to that. I got Joe a massive tool chest and some smaller hand tools. I got a karoake machine (Joe has no idea what he got himself in to!) and a panini press, some perfume, and much more. This week I get to go get a cookie press and mechanical pastry bag. I need to clean and reorganize my cabinets today to make space for all the good stuff Santa brought.
My Mom made an amazing dinner, yet again. After dinner, Joe set up my karaoke machine and sang karaoke with me. We did some Ricky Martin La Vida Loca, and some show tunes from Mama Mia. Brinkley hid under the coffee table and Tucker started chasing his tail. There was a time when I was a voice major----either I was crazy or I'm REALLY rusty! Maybe both!
We had a great, quiet, first Christmas. Now I need to get it in gear and find a place to put all of our gifts.