Our Happy Holidays

For the Christmas season we enjoyed attending all the parties and all the great food, and loved decorating our house for the season.  We are slowly building up our stash of decorations. We also got a pretty decent Christmas tree to decorate this year.

Our Christmas Tree

I made this peppermint bark 
cheesecake for a ward party.

For Christmas this year we had a great vacation with Nate's family.  We started in Kingsport, TN, Nate's hometown. We ate at Nate's favorite restaurants there: Pal's and La Carretta (This wouldn't be noteworthy except Nate is pretty much obsessed with them and I heard more about these before ever visiting Kingsport then anything else). [Nate Note: they are both amazing as Kathryn admits]. We went to the Christmas tree farm where "Christ is the reason for the season, we still say Christmas and always will! Happy Birthday Jesus," is their motto (must be said in a THICK southern accent). The name of the town where it is located is Fall Branch. Gotta love the South. [Nate Note: she does love it]. We also went to the "Bristol Motor Speedway in Lights" where we were only allowed to drive really slowly, (except for one of the straight-aways, which we took advantage of in our CRV).  They had really cool Christmas light scenes everywhere though.  Here are just a few of them. 

 

It had been about a year and a half since Nate had been home so we enjoyed being able to be there and see his family, friends, home ward, and house again.  

For Christmas we each received lots of gifts that we have enjoyed greatly.  I got a new sewing machine from my parents, and Nate gave me a Beanie Baby. [Nate Note: wait for it-that's not all I got her!]. For those who knew me in my childhood, those were one of my favorite toys (I think I collected like 55 of them). He also got me some other nice presents and an awesome trophy for winning the Chili cook-off in my ward this year. (This is part of our tradition of buying each other trophies instead of actually winning them). I got him some nice new headphones, which he loves and looks super pretentious in, which is just what he wanted :). 

The new headphones and his new TN shirt

Llizi got a new carrier from Nate's mom for our future vacations since the last one was a little bit of a disaster (sneaking her onto an Amtrak train in my purse and having her escape).

Llizi in her new tote bag, complete with breathing hole

My first project with my new sewing machine, 
which I gave to Connie

The day after Christmas, we drove up to Maryland to see Nate's sister and her family.  It was so fun to see our little nieces again.  They never fail to be the cutest girls ever.  One of our favorite quotes is from Mikaela who, when asked if she knew what acceleration meant, said, "Birthday Parties?", thinking "acceleration" was "celebration." 

Opening presents on "2nd Christmas" in MD, 
since we couldn't all be together on Christmas

twirling in her new dress

Nate's brother-in-law has a large selection of board games that get pretty heated, and Nate got slightly addicted to Scotland Yard, a detective trying to catch the bad guy game (of course, he liked being the bad guy, Mr. X).  He made us play it at least 5 times on the trip.

[Nate Note: I did wear other shirts this trip-
just none featured in any of these photos]

We also got to see some college friends in DC which was really fun.  We went to the Botanic

gardens and got to see a glimpse of the huge model train they had set up.  We also had some great pizza and got to check out the temple lights and the DC temple visitor's center. 

We also got to bring in the New Year with Nate's whole family in MD, so that was a fun party. We stayed in for a night of games, treats, and Martinelli's.

This guy set us up on our first date!  
He's from Nate's home stake and we saw him in DC

Model of the Capitol at the Botanic Gardens made from plants

Washington, D.C. temple lights

At the tree in the Botanical Gardens

Since we've been home, we've seen our 2nd huge Boston storm, so far we've gotten out of one day of church, and Nate got out of one day of work from the snow!  It should be a little warmer this week, so hopefully it goes away.  

We are excited for the new year and to get back into work and school.  Nate started work again last week and I still have another week before my second semester of classes start. It has been a great break, but I'm about ready to be productive again.