Our first Christmas



2011

Christmas Eve we went to our friend Katie's house. We have officially been adopted as part of her family. Every year they get together at Katie's house and have pedaheh (pierogi) and a soup that has cabbage and dill. We fit right in among the good food, conversation and wonderful people. There's always a lot of laughter in Katie's house. It's sad to think we will only be here one more Christmas Eve.

Nick's family has a tradition of getting to open one Christmas gift on Christmas Eve. The gift would be a new pair of pajamas. I really love this tradition so Nick and I will carry it on. For the last few years Nick and I have gone out the night before Christmas Eve and picked out jammies. This year we got to pick out Kailey's too! I think we've learned a valuable lesson and decided to do our pj shopping not the day before Christmas eve. Everything was pretty much picked over already, but we all found some pj's (maybe I will be able to sew us some pj's next Christmas). Actually we found Kailey's about a week earlier, thank goodness. It just so happened that we all matched this year...non intentionally, but I was pretty excited about it because I knew it would look sweet in our pictures on Christmas Morning.



Hanna & Kailey



Since we've moved to Rochester Nick and I have enjoyed our nice quiet Christmas Days together. It seems like every other year we are with family, either mine or Nick's and then every other year we are by ourselves. This works out pretty nicely. Don't get me wrong, I really miss my family on Christmas, and it took some getting used to, but I'm excited to hopefully have a home where our families can come to our house and enjoy Christmas. I'm also looking forward to starting our own traditions with Kailey. We put some music on and took showers and then enjoyed the day. I finished my Christmas gift for my best friend (which I still haven't mailed out to her) and Nick worked on dinner ALL day. Kailey, she was hanging out watching and cooing away. Our friends Glen, Meredith and Hanna stopped by to say hello and wish us a Merry Christmas. It was also their first Christmas as a little family. We didn't realize they didn't have plans otherwise we would have done a Christmas Dinner with them, maybe next year.

Nick's dinner was awesome. He made a prime rib dinner with these mashed potato dumplings things that were out of this world. The prime rib was stuffed with spinach and bacon. There was also some carrots and biscuits. The biscuits were all from scratch. They had green onions inside....oh man, we were in heaven. That man really has a gift!





Mashed Potato Dumplings





After dinner we just snuggled up on the couch and watched some Christmas movies we'd DVR'd. But before that I had to have a mini photo session with the babe for her first Christmas:





The unintentional artsy photo.