Christmas Cheer (and photos!)

It's taken awhile, but here is my Christmas! I spent it with my family in Nova Scotia and for the first time ever I actually came home from school and stayed with my parents for quite some time. It felt like I was in first year since this was the first Christmas that I'm living more than 30 minutes away from my parents.

Our house was jammed packed with family (hooray!), so unlike coming home from first year not only did I not have my own bedroom I didn't have a bedroom at all. I didn't shed any tears, I spent my nights on the LARGEST inflatable mattress ever, it's bigger than my own bed, curled up in my super warm sleeping bag. I felt like I was in Elementary school again at a sleepover!

Anyway, the title of this post has "photos" in it - so I should probably get to that part. Heads up, things are not quite in chronological order:

Too zoomed, but who doesn't love a Santa hat!

While some of us were home and before others went away for Christmas we headed out to the Henry House for yummy food and a long over due catch up. Hilarity ensued as per usual:

This is what I spent the majority of my holidays doing - in fact I've had to break from it because my right wrist started to get sore. It turns out there are knitting muscles that I haven't built up yet.

Every Christmas Eve we have a party, and every Christmas morning either my brother or myself wants nothing more to curl up and recover while others open presents and drink mimosas. Like last year, this year was also Terry's turn:

Poor Dad, beer will always taste a bit off in this marked stein. But it's a great mug in spite of the emblem:

On Boxing Day one of my uncles and his (2.5 year old) daughter flew in from Ontario. Greg also swung by, from Miramichi. This resulted in very pretty (awesome) presents from Greg, that fantastic blue CBC shirt behind me AND the pretty bracelet I'm sporting:

A little blurry, but you can get the idea. I was very happy!

On Christmas Day (I know this because I'm wearing a hoodie and sweatpants which is my Christmas Day uniform) we had an almost complete family photo:

It wouldn't be a holiday post if I didn't have a bunch of photos of food.

This is Boxing Day supper, Fish and Brewis. A Newfoundland treat! I forgot to take a pre-served photo so these look a bit dug into for a reason:

This is the brewis (pronounced brews)

Potatoes at the top and the fish at the bottom.

This was our Christmas Day dinner - a few things to note:
1. The Christmas cracker - always an item at our Christmas table
2. The name card behind the cracker - for ease of knowing where to go but mostly for nerdyness points
3. The yellow mush to the left of the turkey - that's pease pudding
4. The brown stuff to the right of the turkey - that's bread pudding

Both of the links for the puddings have gross looking photos for them - as you can see the things below are not gross but rather THE BEST PARTS OF CHRISTMAS DINNER!

This is the bread pudding before it's cut up (it's the size of a large turnip):

Excellent looking turkey, I can't take any credit in cooking!

This is "Nan Dessert", which is made by my Nan - we're a clever family! It's a layered dessert with oreo cookie crumbs, custard, sliced banana and nutriwhip. That just repeats a few times and then it's sprinkled with some shaved chocolate for the top. This is our favorite Christmas dessert!

This is the cousin I was talking about that arrived on Boxing Day, she is very smiley and VERY energetic!

We played "shuffle your butt down the stairs after a bear we just threw down" for a long time. My butt was definitely a bit sore and I was tired BUT it was really fun!

Back to the o'l Christmas Dinner cracker hats!

Ma and Pa!

Well that was my Christmas, many, many, many more photos were taken (thanks Dad!) but uploading them would be a nightmare. I think this covers the basics - lots of eating, drinking, gift giving and hanging out happened and it was all wonderful!