Family, Food, and Good times

Merry Christmas! Russell and I are having a great time up here. For the most part we have been doing a lot of nothing, which for me is great! We had a great drive down it only took us a little over 4 1/2 hours to make the drive. Not including the about an hour break we took to eat breakfast and let the baby run around a random Starbucks in Barstow. We met my sister and her husband out here. And my Uncle Gary happened to be in town yesterday so he stopped by. He was in town because both of his kids (my cousins) J.R. and Suzy are in a tournament for bowling for a University in Illinois. We will probably be going the day after Christmas to see him play.

But this morning we woke up and had a wonderful breakfast with scrambled eggs with chili peppers, bacon, muffins, English muffins, hash browns, and orange juice. Yummy! We opened presents and then started on Christmas dinner. My grandmother had her sister (my Great Aunt Edith) and her husband (Great Uncle Hugh), one of their sons (Doug) and daughters (Debbie) and their daughters son (Jamie). I see my Great Aunt and Uncle often because they live by my grandmother and we get to see them from time to time. The others I guess I haven't seen since I was in elementary school, or so they told me, because I don't remember. Jaime (my 2nd cousin) actually shook my hand and said "It was nice meeting you" when he left. Huh, I guess not a strong family bond between us. We had a wonderful Christmas dinner. We had turkey (that my sister made), ham, mashed potatoes (that my sister made), stuffing (that I made), salad, bread, green bean casserole (that I made thanks to Linny), stuffed cabbage, cranberry sauce, and candied yams. I'm sooo looking forward to left overs! All the extended family didn't stay too long. I guess I'm use the Stade family clan hanging out until your ready to go to bed. We just had our dessert which included apple pie, pumpkin pie, and cheesecake. You would think my grandmother is feeding an army. But there is something about being over here that just makes my stomach expand and I eat sooo much.

Russell and I were sitting around with the baby. I am already wearing a pajama shirt that says "DREAM" on it with rhinestones. Penelope likes pointing to the letters and I tell her "M", "R" , "D". Sometimes she says it back. Well we were all sitting around and she started pointing at "M". So I proceeded to say "m". She got so passionate about it! It was hilarious. She started saying, "mmmmmm...Ma". And as she is saying "mmm" her pitch is getting higher and higher. Each time she starts over she gets more passionate about it. Until she is sitting with her hands in fists, with a serious face, straight lipped, slightly shaking her head, as loud as she can. It sent Russell and I in hilarious laughing. We laughed so hard, we scared her. Poor thing. But you should have been there it was sooo funny. I so wish I had my camera and we could have recorded it. But I forgot my camera at home and so we went to the grocery store and bought a disposable camera yesterday. Hopefully she'll do it again when we get back.

Well...I hope everyone is having a great Christmas. We are missing everyone from our home town. I hope you all had a great time today.