Christmas Season 2012.

As, we went down to my parents house in the Twin Cities for Thanksgiving, we chose to have Christmas with Rand's side.  We were invited to Rand's Dad's Cousin, Eddie's House in Devils Lake. We celebrated with around 25 people there and enjoyed a day of fun adventures and activity.

We arrived mid morning  after missing the quick turn to their house and making our way out of the ditch.  Good thing we had put "premium" gas into the Honda, otherwise we may not have made it up ;)We started the morning by enjoying brunch food and playing a fun game of Seafarers (Settlers of Catan Expansion). I think Rand has grown up around a lot of this food, but I got to enjoy some new things like Krumkake, boxed cheese from Washington, and pickled treats like Hering. I was proud of myself for exploring my horizons and pleasantly surprised by the new tastes.

 In the afternoon we went out into the frigid cold and XC skied. It was the first time for me since about 4th grade and I thoroughly enjoyed venturing out in Rand's company looking like that little kid from A Christmas Story with an added addition of Ski goggles.  I was really happy because I finally got to break a sweat, which is something I have been craving for a while! Sometime in the midst of all this, our party grew to include two little toy black poodles that belonged to one family that was there. It was like "trying out" the cute little pets that you see at the pet store and never get to play with. These two were 8 weeks old and about the size of a Gatorade bottle. The best was that they came from a family that included an 13 month old and a 3 year old who were delighted by chasing them around and picking them up.

We also enjoyed a traditional Lutheran Christmas Eve service where I made the mistake of drinking what I thought was "juice" at communion. Whoops! Ha it was a laugh, only after I realized that that wouldn't cause our baby to have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Before leaving for home we enjoyed a great meal at the largest table I had ever eaten at. It was similar in size to the tables you would see in pictures at Medevial Feast's and could set nearly everyone there! It was fun to enjoy the traditions of a highly Norweigan family, which included in this meal speaking a Norwegian prayer before supper, lefse, and Lutefisk (drenched in butter and salt of course).  It was a plesant day and it ended with Rand letting me open up the rest of my presents from him.  I started crying a bit when he told me that he had purchases a two-night stay at a bed in breakfast in Duluth with our dear friends the Onyshuks. I CAN'T WAIT!

Christmas day we spent just with the Seay family and we FEASTED. We had a delicious morning brunch, opened presents, and then had an amazing meal of prime rib, shrimp, and King Crab. YUM! I was so stuffed. Alys got me a really neat book and I spent the rest of the day dreaming about what type of person I would be in complete freedom.