Christmas Vacation Recap

We had over two full weeks off of school for Christmas vacation!  It was a great time of relaxation, sleeping in, few obligations and fun.  For a blogger, I pretty shamefully did not document much with photos, so I will just give a short recap.

1.  MOVIES, MOVIES, MOVIES!  Our family loves movies and we watched a lot of them.  We got an awesome amount of movie theater gift cards for Christmas so we were all set.   We saw the Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, Frozen, Saving Mr. Banks, and Anchorman 2 (just Jen and Dave.)  Plus we ate lots of popcorn!

At home we watched Elf, A Christmas Story, White Christmas, RIPD, and Lord of the Rings.

2.  Double feature movie night with friends.  We also had our friends the Griffins over for a double feature and pizza party.  We watched the new Superman movie and Wolverine along with eating some yummy Jet's pizza.

3.  Midnight bowling.  Ashley didn't want to go the whole break without a little bowling practice, so we decided to go to the "all you can bowl" from 10pm-12am.  I mean, it's not like we had to wake up early the next day.  Ashley bowled her personal best so far 190!  That girl is getting close to 200!

4.  Hanging with friends.  Both girls went to parties at friends houses and spent other time with friends. Paige went to play with friends - American Girl and Minecraft were favorite past times.  Ashley went on mall shopping trips and to the movies with her friends.

5.  Friends and family parties.  We are so very fortunate to have good friends here.  We were on the receiving end of some great holiday invitations.  We spent Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve with friends at family dinner parties.  Besides delicious food and awesome company, we played games, chatted, went caroling, and had all sorts of fun.

6.  Binge-watched "Once Upon a Time."  For the past 6 plus months, the girls and I have been watching the tv show "Once Upon a Time" on Netfix.  Currently, season 3 is running on tv, so we have had to watch two seasons to catch up.  It hasn't been easy because the three of us can never sit down at the same time to watch tv, so it's definitely taken longer than expected.  Well we are now all caught up thanks to binge-watching over Christmas break.  Of course, the down side is that now we have to wait every week like everyone else for each episode.

7.  Eating lots of junk.  My sister Debby and her husband, Sam, sent us one of those gift towers of fruit and candy.  9 levels to be exact.  That along with other treats, gifts, and candy left us with a counter full of food.  At the beginning of the break, I thought there would be no way we could get through it all.  Update - we pretty much were able to eat our way through it.  It has been junk food city around here.  I've hardly cooked any regular meals because we've been eating out or eating so much other crap no one was ever hungry at dinner time.

The tower of treats - pears, apples, candy, chocolate,
cookies, nuts, crackers, oh my!

A fun gift we received, homemade vanilla extract

8.  Candy-making.  I know that it is kind of ironic to follow number 7 above with a story about making lots of Christmas candy, but it's just not Christmas to me without making some candy.  I will report that we did gift over 75% of it.  I made fudge, English toffee and sugar cookies.  I didn't have to make caramels because a family friend makes the best caramels and gave us a huge tin.  LUCKY.

9.  Games.  Each girl got a board game for Christmas.  Ashley got a chess board.  The girls are just beginners but they have been playing a lot and honing their strategies.  Paige got the game Hedbandz which is always good for a laugh.