Insta Christmas 2

More Christmas Instagram fun!  My friends Erick and Cassandra hosted the most WONDERFUL Christmas brunch for all our friends.  The Durtschi's are some of the best cooks I know, thus you know the meal was amazing.  We had apple cider pancakes, they had such a intense yummy apple flavor it was amazing and the most creamy baked eggs with spinach, can you say gourmet?!  And of course we had wonderful, soul warming crio to drink.

They also had the CUTEST Christmas dishes and had done such a great job at decorating for Christmas, I felt like it captured the essence of a traditional Christmas, if that even makes sense.  All in all it was a very memorable and delicious morning!

We had tons of snow this year which made for a white Christmas season!  It seems like ages since we have had one of those.  I couldn't resist taking pictures in the snow every time we had a blizzard!

It was fun to watch the progression of my kitties relationship, while they were immediately good playmates, it took them a while to actually "like" each other.  I couldn't wait for the day that I would wake up and find them cuddling since they weren't that kind of friendly for a while when Dina first came to stay with us.  It began with sitting close by each other, then slowly Dina worked her way into Louis heart and it is now a common occurrence  to see them tangled in a fluffy cuddle.

For my friends and neighbor gifts, I made some coconut ginger hand and body scrub from scratch.  It was sooo much fun to make, I might whip up a batch every month now!  I got some cute little bottles at Hobby Lobby and covered them with some fun scrapbook paper and delivered them around to my lovely friends.  Hopefully they pampered themselves after surviving the stressful holiday season!

On Christmas Eve, my dad and I made a bunch of yummy Christmas treats for the whole family to enjoy on Christmas morning.  We began with our family's favorite cinnamon rolls!  It's a family tradition to have warm cinnabuns for breakfast on Christmas morning, it's a fabulous tradition!

Then I made some gingerbread cookies just because I love gingerbread so much at Christmas time!

Every year I am blown away by how beautiful my mom's Christmas decorations are, what a fantastic place to have Christmas dinner!  Seriously though, is that not the most beautiful Christmas table you have ever seen?  And she does it every year!!!

My mom and Nora had made these fun party poppers!  They thought homemade ones would be better because you could put better prices inside, they definitely thought right! Nora was so excited for everyone to open their popper and see what prizes they had put inside!

Both of my parents are excellent cooks and spent all day in the kitchen creating a wonderful Christmas meal for the entire family!  They are the BEST!  My dad made some yorkshire pudding to accompany the roast and potatoes my mom made, they looked so glorious right out of the oven when they were all puffed and golden!  You better believe they tasted delicious as well!

The Burton's elf  on the shelf, Einstein, was totally sneaky and snuck into the car when they drove up from Arizona!!  He was found doing all sorts of crazy and naughty things all over grammie and grandpa's house!

We had a lovely recital put on by all the grand kids, we got a talented bunch! 

Dina and I on Christmas morning!

Present time!  I loved this present that Nora had wrapped and decorated for Grammy, those two are the best of friends.

We draw families in our family so it was a big surprise when Bethy had a gift for me even though she didn't have me this year.  She had hand painted peacock feathers on a pair of black toms!!!!  What a beautiful and oh so comfortable gift!  I love them!! She also gave me some cute festive treats, such as Christmas soda!

My mom gave me this beautiful collection of Vincent Van Gogh's letters, I have been wanting this set for YEARS!! I am so so so happy to finally have a complete set of these letters.  I wrote a term paper on Vincent Van Gogh in college and did a lot of my research in his letters, I learned so much about him through his sweet and thoughtful words to his family and friends.

The day after Christmas we had our annual family ski day.  Ben came this year and he decided he wanted to learn how to snowboard instead of ski!!  How exciting for me since I am the only one in the family that doesn't know how to ski, I only learned to board.

Ben did and AMAZING job, he only took two runs on the bunny hill and then was ready to try out the "big boy" runs!  He did great on those runs as well, he definitely got the speed thing down, he was hard to keep up with at times!  We later tried to work on carving so that he could control some of that speed

Look at all the snow!!!!

Towards the end of their trip I had Karin and her boys over to my house so they could meet my newest baby, Dina and play a little with Louis.  I served them hot chocolate and we had a fun afternoon playing at my house!  It's so fun to finally have a place of my own that I can actually entertain guests at!  I love having people over!