Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas (albeit it a little late), everyone! Things have been kind of hectic, but I love the holidays and all the celebrating around them. On Friday 12/21 my mom turned 60 and my sisters and I threw a big birthday party for her at a local function facility, Spinelli's. We had about 50 guests and I think she enjoyed it. It was just like planning a mini wedding reception, complete with centerpieces, favors, a tiered cake, slideshow, and gifts. My sisters did most of the work, I just "coordinated" :P Thank goodness for crafty and technically-literate siblings!

Four days later on Christmas day we hosted the 24 guests at our house. Amazingly there was still too much food. Of course, I didn't make it all though I did bust out not one but two Crock Pots for the first time ever and made three different dishes with them--chicken with stuffing, pork roast, and salmon. I think they turned out decently well, though I didn't love any of the recipes in the end. Next time I'll stick with my tried and true chicken thighs instead of dry chicken breast--blech.

Each family was asked to bring one dish so that I wouldn't end up cooking all day and, honestly, there's no way I'd be able to pull off cooking for 24 if my life depended on it! Somehow there was still waaaaaay more food than we could ever eat so everyone was forced to take a couple of containers of leftovers home. But WC and I are still eating the leftovers this week!

All in all, the whole family party went pretty well I think. I was very happy that we pulled off hosting our first family Christmas at our place :) And, thankfully, we'll probably never have to host Thanksgiving since we usually use that time to visit WC's mom in Arizona. Heehee....

And Happy New Year to everyone, too! After all the parties around Christmas we totally weren't into New Year's celebrations this year so WC and I met up with my mom and sisters for a little steak dinner and then just went home and played video games for the rest of the night. First we played the Wii at my sisters' place, then we went home to our PS2 and played the SSX game I got him for Christmas. That game is more fun than I remember! I'm totally addicted now and spending way too much time on it. It's getting me jazzed for our trip to Vail in February (it's a snowboarding game, for those of you who don't know).

With Christmas and New Year's both falling on Tuesdays this year everyone's schedules are all wacky. Yay for what feels like a whole bunch of short weeks in a row though!

Oh, and as an aside, when I checked the thermometer in our bathroom this morning it was...wait for it...7 degrees outside. Seven! I don't know what happened, it's been in the 40s most days but today is definitely CCCCCCCOLD! Ah, New England :P