Merry! Merry!

Whew! Thank goodness the holidays are over! I'm not sure I could've taken much more. It seemed like Joel and I were always going somewhere. There wasn't much downtime but it was a great Christmas.

We started on Christmas Eve at Joel's cousins house for dinner. It was great to see everyone and Julie fixed a fantastic meal (she made an appetizer with gouda and carmalized unions...mmm). We played a few games and puzzles with Joel's cousin's daughter Nadine. She's 3 1/2 and loads of fun. Then headed home to Joel's dads for Christmas gift exchange. I got an IPOD shuffle! a digital camera! and work clothes! It was nice to spend some time with just Joel, Nathan, and Harry. Pictures and video on the blog are courtesy of my new camera!

On Christmas morning, we relaxed and fixed an appetizer and salad for Christmas dinner. The day was filled with backgammon, Connect Four, and more food. We had a sit down dinner of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc....

I learned how to put videos on my blog (so exciting!) After dinner, Nadine had great fun using Nathan as a trampoline!

The day after Christmas I spent with my best buds from college. We had our annual post-holiday get together. It's one of our holiday traditions and it's always nice to catch up, relax and eat great food!
Ella also sang "Jingle Bells" all the way through for me! She's definitely a talented little girl.

After those visits, Joel and I headed down to my parents on the 27th for a few days. We had the Gifford-Hertel family Christmas two nights in a row! Once at my parents and once with my brother at a restaurant. It was a really nice visit-filled with more great food and my mom's cookies! MMMMMMM.
We also had time for some DDR (Dance Dance Revolution!) with my high school friends. Joel turned out to be really good! Who knew he had such rhythm?

Stay tuned for New Years!