Christmas!

Since my family is Jewish, the holiday of Christmas has little meaning or value to us. My family often celebrates it the same way the rest of the Jews do, by going out to a Chinese restaurant and then going to a movie! It's great :o) Needless to say, Christmas is not the biggest holiday for us. Since I was home for a week at Thanksgiving, and I need to save vacation time for graduate school interviews later this winter (hopefully, that is), I decided to stay in Madison for the first time in 5 years for Christmas and New Years.

Tim and I were both able to get off for 5 days, and decided to make the long drive up to visit Tim's parents in Spicer, MN. We decided to leave at 12:30am (yes am!) because Madison was going to get pounded with oh-my-good-grief-MORE snow sometime around 3am and we never would have been able to safely get up to Spicer. I was in bed, in my PJs, with the lights off, when Tim came home from work and wanted to leave (grrrrr). Although I was NOT thrilled to drive through the night, it worked out well because Cooper slept the whole way and we were able to miss the snow storm that Madison DID indeed get.

We arrived in Spicer at the crack of dawn around 7:30am. Luckily, Tim's parents are wonderful and took great care of us, so from the moment we arrived we were fed like royalty, Cooper was spoiled rotten, and the relaxation began! Tim's brother, Dan, was also home for the holidays, and his girlfriend Sarah joined us on Friday (this was the first time Tim and I met her and we liked her very much :o) ). I also got to celebrate Christmas "Court" style. There were lots of presents for everyone (including Cooper! Jennifer and John like to spoil their grand-puppy), TONS of great food, and TONS of great sugary treats. Here are some of the images from the weekend:

Tim and Dan opened their gifts to each other first:

Cooper helped open some of his presents too; and he had a lot:

Dan got these two flying remote control helicopters that we had way more fun with than anyone over the age of 6 should:

We also lit the Chanukah candles three nights since Jennifer is also Jewish so we had quite a few Jews in one room (Tim knows the Chanukah prayer, and his basketball team used to make him say it before some of their games in high school, haha!):

We had a very relaxing weekend! I was not excited about the 6 hour drive back, but Cooper only had one mini-meltdown and we were able to make good time so it wasn't too bad. Not to mention it wasn't in the middle of the night this time! Thanks Jennifer and John for a great weekend!