Christmas Post I

Everette and Jonathan in front of our Christmas Tree. Jonathan LOVED being in his snow suit-obvious by his joyous countenance

So apparantly I have been reduced to once a month blogging. THis makes me sad. I am not sure why this is happening. I feel so "unbloggy"-Yes I made up this word.
So the holidays have come and gone. I am a tiny bit sad about all of this. I am protesting. This combined with the fact that I have felt more observational than conversational leads to not much blogging. Our holidays were quite honestly spectacular. They were not without a small amount of family drama-but mostly they were wonderful. Everette's brother Brad who lived in NYC came with his girlfriend Meghan (yes-I know this is weird, especially if you consider the fact that my dad and his brother both married Susans) on the 19th of December to celebrate Christmas early. The weather was slightly uncooperative so Everette and I ended up driving to O'Hare together to pick them up. It made for a really late night, but we got to spend a few hours alone together in Everette's parent's new Santa Fe. A nice ride-plus XM radio. Which Everette, naively or generously (I am really not sure which) gave me control of. This meant two hours of music glory--I rotated between the Elvis station, the ABBA station (I was VERY Excited about this), and four (count 'em FOUR) Christmas stations. The ride back provided a great opportunity to spend with Brad and Meghan.

The next night we borrowed a 15 passenger van and we had dinner at Mt Fuji's, then went to the Living Nativity, and to see the lights in Frankfort and Rossville.Uncle Brad and Meghan, Uncle Grant and Daddy in the backseat during our Christmas Light Extravaganza!

Monday we had what we have now termed "early Christmas" (we started with "fake Christmas" but apparently it didn't catch on) with the Mills. We opened presents and had our traditional breakfast-Cheese Grits, Little Smokies Wrapped in Bacon (affectionately termed "meat wrapped in meat covered in sugar"-trust me they are delicious), Ambrosia, and coffee cake. This is where tradition ended and new traditions were made-- we took Everette's grammommie out for margaritas at Don Pablos, then returned home for a prime rib dinner instead of Turkey.

So Grant and Brad have this tradition where they wrap their presents to one another in the most ridiculous ways. Not pictured here is Brad's present to Grant wrapped to look like a 3-D reindeer. THis is Grant's present to Brad-which I think takes the cake in disgustingness. He used Mary's old pantyhose and it had these gross tentacles on the top.

Jonathan got three super awesome gifts that day...1. An indoor playgym (from Gramps and Grammy) 2. Two awesome crawling tunnels (from Uncle Brad and Meghan) 3. a wagon full of MegaBlocks (from Uncle Grant)

We always knew Everette was "special" (Brad got a ski helmet from Mary and WL and Everette felt compelled to try it on).

We sent Brad and Meghan off (to her family in Missouri) with biscuits and gravy on Tuesday (are you starting to see a Mills family theme).
I had all of our shopping and other prep work done so the whole week right into Christmas was incredibly relaxing.



Jonathan playing and squeaking in his new play gym