A great weekend in the making...

If only this was all we were hauling in the truck today.... more pictures to come.

Christmas Day - A little late (forgive me!)

Christmas and the holidays in general have become doubly fun and doubly family packed.  This year, like last year, we spent Christmas Eve morning with the McGrath's (Erin included).  We had a wonderful brunch (or maybe its just breakfast since we left before 10:30 am).  We opened presents and had a wonderful morning of food, laughs and family.  Then, we headed home to Freeport to the traditional Christmas Eve party at my parents house.  We changed things up a bit since my parents were headed to Cabo on Christmas day.  We did dinner after the 5:30 service and our traditional lights viewing...of course, the Big Red Apple was included.

We had our normal meal of Pigs in a Blanket (NOT hot dogs and croissant rolls) and Dumplings....my most favorite meal of all time.  If I was on death row and had one last meal to pick, it would be this.  For me, this meal is heaven on earth and I just can't imagine Christmas without it. 

Christmas day was equally packed with fun and family.  We did Christmas presents with my family (and I got the amazing computer I'm typing on right now) and shared coffee, a few laughs and a second of my favorite meals, left over dumplings with eggs!! 

Around noon Ryan and I drove my parents to the Ohare for their awesome trip to Cabo.  The day didn't end there, we then went straight home to drop off the 3 dogs (we are watching Ruby for the week while my parents vacation) and then went over to David and Corda's for the McGrath's traditional Christmas Day festivities.  We at too much and did the gift exchanges. 

One of my favorite parts of Christmas day (a new tradition for me) is Bingo at the McGrath's family Christmas.  We play bingo with white elephant gifts of sort.  This year, we made our second great addition to Bingo....see picture below!!!

Erin won the annual Deer Foot.  Last year Chris and Brenna drew this gift from Bingo (it might have been slightly fixed) and they had TONS of adventures with it throughout the year.  They dressed it up in a cute vase and passed it on for next year.  Next Christmas a photo album will accompany this great find and we will make it a family tradition.  It makes me laugh to see how the Ritterbusch's have influenced this family.  Nick, won the newest addition to Bingo, a turkey leg covered in leather with a deer eye at the bottom.  I can't wait to see what this year's photo albums bring!!

As always, I made my Christmas Sugar Cookies.  There were tons of issues with this years batch including having to purchase new cutters.  But, all that being said, my cookie making life has been significantly improved by the following items:
1 new cookie dough recipe (thanks Ellyn)
1 new silicone baking mat (thanks Wedding returns)
1 cookies press/frosting squirter (thanks Beth Olson!!)

Here are some pics of the great cookies I made this year.

I'm really late with this post but Merry Christmas and Happy New Years.  More pictures and posts to come after the New Year's festivities.  This year should be a riot with 28 people at the lake house this year!!