A Michigan Christmas

Okay. I’m finally getting to my Christmas post - this year has certainly been busy so far LOL! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday - despite my general Grinchiness this year, I actually had a very nice Christmas. I made the trek north to Grand Rapids, Michigan to spend the holiday with my family. All but one of my brothers were there, along with my parents, my little niece, my uncles, aunt and gramps! It was really nice to see everyone again and spend some time just hanging out with them. I missed Bob, but as is our tradition, we talked on the phone everyday while I was gone and the time went by really fast.

We ended up having several Christmas parties - first on the actual day of Christmas - we hung out at my brother Dave’s housed and had the traditional Dutch get-together meal of ham buns. My niece Mya provided some entertainment for us all, showing off her new Cabbage Patch "baby" and Elmo. We played a round of Tribond (which is a very entertaining board game by the way) and watched some videos of Mya which are destined to become America’s Funniest Home Video classics! On Tuesday we all got together again for our big party - we play a game of Concentration every year with fun little prizes (the board is in the picture - pretty cool, huh?) and this year we did a thrift-store gift exchange (with a $5 limit) - pretty fun to see what everyone found! I went home with a window alarm, some cleanser, a new set of dishes and a Lenox Christmas plate!

We tried to have our family Christmas (with just the immediate family) on Wednesday, but my brother Mike got really sick, so we ended up just laying low for the day, seeing if he’d start feeling better, but no luck. I went to the LSS with my sister-in-law and bought way too much stuff from their 75% off clearance - I mean who can resist getting $150 worth of stuff for like $38? Not me.

Thursday morning was catch-up day - bright and early we opened our presents from the immediate family before heading out for breakfast. Every year my Gramps has us all out for New Years’ breakfast at his usual place (I think he goes there four days a week now LOL), but since New Years fell on Sunday this year, we decided to do it early while everyone was in town. It’s always a lot of fun - this year we had 15 of us and the food’s always good too. The most fun is seeing how tickled Gramps is at getting everyone together!

Outside of all our partying, I did a little shopping and watched a few movies with my folks - it’s nice to be able to do some everyday things with them - I really do miss that living so far away. I also finally got a chance to show them some of my scrapbooking stuff - they’re not really internet people LOL. And, my dad loved the canvas and t-shirt I made for him - I did a layout with his boat on it and used iron-on paper - he wore it almost every day I was there! I was so excited about it, I was thrilled that he liked it!

So, now it’s back to life as usual - it’s always hard to get back into the swing of things after being away, but I kind of feel like I am now. Got a couple of interesting (but tough) cases at work and lots of new ideas swirling around for scrapbooking. Now if I can just nail some of them down!