I know I am a little bit late with this...but Merry Christmas! I hope that all of you were as blessed as I was this Christmas. I received some incredible gifts this year. Two of my favorite would have to be tickets to see Dan+Shay in Denver and Beats Solo2 headphones (which are currently playing Dan+Shay). I got adorable new clothes and some fabulous accessories, including a beautiful pair of Tiffany&Co earrings, and so many other fabulous things. I could go on but this blog isn't supposed to be about me bragging about how I'm a little spoiled. Besides, as awesome as all of this stuff is, my favorite part of the holidays is getting to have fun, quality-time with my family.
I have the pleasure of having two Christmas celebrations with two different families: my dad's side and my mom's side. I guess you could say the festivities kicked off with my dad's family on December 20th when we went up to Milwaukee for a Dickens-themed dinner at the Pabst mansion. I'm not a big fan of Charles Dickens but I am a huge fan of big fancy mansions. The place was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the company was great. It was especially awesome when one of the men in character read a passage from The Christmas Carol in a crazy accent.
The next night, my Aunt Lori, Uncle Ben, and I visited a light display near Palatine. It's four houses (two on each side) that put up a bunch of lights and synchronize them to music. This was my second year seeing it and it is so awesome. It's called Lights on Magnolia for anyone in the NW burbs looking for some Christmas lights.
On the 22nd, a group of us went downtown for more Christmas fun. The plan was to eat lunch at Macy's Walnut Room, but when it took 10 minutes to find the end of the line to get on the waiting list we figured it was better to go somewhere else. No kidding, the line wrapped all the way around the 7th floor and it would have taken at least 5 hours to be seated. After lunch, we headed back to Macy's to see the tree and get some Frango mints before visiting the Christkindlmarket. Unfortunately, it started to rain on our parade. Back at my Grama's house in Des Plaines, I did a craft with my two little cousins...except my one little cousin isn't exactly little anymore since she is 11 and as tall as me, but you get the point. We watched Christmas Vacation too which is my absolute favorite Christmas movie ever. After that, I had a delicious dinner and then a fantasy football nightmare (see "Is This Just Fantasy?").
By Christmas Eve morning, I was touching down in Denver and it was time for the Angiollo (mom's side) fun to kick off. I was so excited to be back. When I got to Uncie and Ash's house in CO Springs, I had to wrap a lot of presents and then the whole family decorated sugar cookies before heading to Mass. After Mass, we had a pizza making extravaganza. It was super fun and insanely delicious. Then we all tried to watch Elf except everyone ended up falling asleep.
Christmas morning was wonderful as usual. I love the way my family does Christmas. We spend all morning opening presents and there is no rush at all. We usually end up staying in our new pajamas until 2pm. Since Uncie was in South Carolina for Thanksgiving, we had Thanksgiving on Christmas too. Dinner was complete with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, corn, cranberries....and sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts but those are yucky and I don't like them. It is also a tradition to play a game after dinner and we take this very seriously. This year we played HeadsUp! which was so funny except it didn't exactly go very well since we were all laughing too hard to function. After our little game, we put on the movie Scrooged with Bill Murray. If you haven't seen it, you should. It's pretty darn ridiculous.
The day after Christmas, the six of us headed up to the mountains. Uncie, Ash, two of their friends, and I hit the slopes at Keystone that afternoon. As soon as I got to the top of the mountain, all I could think to myself was "holy shit I love these mountains" and that is definitely the truth. It wasn't crowded at all and we got two great runs in before taking a short break. When we headed back up for two more it seemed almost empty. It was starting to snow too so visibility wasn't great. I usually stay on the cautious side when I ski just because I am afraid to lose control, but something inside me made me just let go. I flew down that mountain. In sections where I usually go slow, I just zoomed. It was so freeing. When you're flying down a mountain, you literally don't think of anything else. Gosh I love it so much. On the last run of the day I did wipe out pretty bad, but I just got up and flew down the rest of the run. That night we headed over to Breckenridge's Main St. to explore and have some dinner.
The next morning we went to a hill to go sledding. I am a very klutzy person that is prone to injury. On my first trip down the hill, I headed right for a huge bump/ramp. I got some serious air and I landed super hard. I've fractured my tailbone before...it's miserable. Fingers crossed that I didn't break my ass again.
We packed everything up and now I'm chilling in Colorado Springs again. There's only about a week before I have to go back to school. This might have been the best Christmas yet. There was so many fun activities and so much love all around. I hope everyone had a great holiday!
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