Christmas at the Lake

It’s been awhile and I thought that Christmas would be a good place to recap.  This year was a pretty good Christmas.

Me and J spent the weekend having our own Christmas just the two of us before getting together with the family.  We celebrated on Sunday morning by opening our stockings in bed with coffee then the rest of our gifts after breakfast.

I’m not going to lie I really got the best present in the entire world.  Like literally.  The best.

Mostly all J got from me was clothes.  I know, so romantic. He tried to fool me by getting me a ton of little presents so I would think I wasn’t getting much, but it didn’t work because I loved everything! One of my favorites was a giraffe usb flash drive.  So cute.  But the best one of all was…..can you guess?…

How did you know?  I have seriously been wanting a Garmin 305 for ages and J got me the upgrade, a 410!  I know I haven’t been good enough to deserve it but for some reason J still loves me!  I couldn’t wait to take it for it’s first spin but since we were up at the Lake that night I didn’t get a chance for a run right away.  It had to be a walk.  I was a little bratty disappointed about it but so excited to use it! I even used my nike+ app to try and compare the two.  They were actually pretty off.  I’m not sure if it is because of the satellites and the gps in the mountains/trees.  But I took it for a 6.75 mile run on Christmas in the snow and it was wonderful!  They both lined up a little more that time.  I still have a lot to learn about it and syncing and all that but definitely the best present ever!

I spent a lot of the Sunday day baking and getting ready to have family Christmas up at the lake.  I haven’t really ever baked for Christmas before (without my mom) so it was stressful fun to do it this year.  I mostly made a lot of candy because that is the least time consuming and what I like best (obviously).  My favorite is the peanut brittle!

There was so much that I wanted to make and didn’t get a chance to!  Maybe next year.  We drove Sunday night so that we were there for Christmas Eve.  We had a “relaxing” day and then went to mass that night.  On Christmas I went for my run and then the rest of the family arrived that afternoon. We opened our gifts with some wine and cheese before we ate dinner.

I definitely got all of the best gifts this year.  So much running/gym gear it makes a girl wanna work out more.  Or just hang out on the couch eating chocolate in all my comfy workout clothes.

Honestly though, the best part of Christmas was just hanging out with everyone, telling that’s what she said jokes, being funny, drinking wine, playing Uno and hanging out by the best fire ever woodstove.  Big shout out to my mom and dad for letting us hang out with them at their awesome lake house, and to my mom for making such amazing food for us to eat!

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Byeee.

Gluttony.

So I promised you a birthday post.

I had quite the birthday weekend.  Yes.  Quite.  Saturday J had a dueling gig and I went to see him and celebrate Halloween My Birthday!  It was such a great night and I got to hang out with my BFF and my cousin and her hubby!  I had a blast and J was amazing!  It was so good to finally see him do his thing.

Rocking out!

Some more pics from the night..

It was literally one of the most fun nights I have had in awhile.  I was clearly a creepy, ghouly Alice in Wonderland.  Clearly.  That picture of me crying is just to show the hilarity that transpired during the night . Lots of craziness.  Two cousins together makes for a photoshoot of laughter.  I am not going to bore you with all 10,234,234 pictures that were taken of just the two of us. Especially because we had the worst photographer ever!

So I have been using my birthday and the hurricane as an excuse to pig out and eat everything in sight. First I made birthday cake and then some little pumpkin cake/cookies.  They were delicious.

I stole the cake recipe from HERE and pretty much followed the recipe except for the frosting.  Instead, I made a marshmallowy topping since I don’t really like cool whip (I know I’m so weird).  It was a really good cake, I don’t know about better than anything, but it was good.  The toffee bits topping was the best part!  I wont tell you about the night that J and I just took a spoon to the top.

Now, the cookies were really easy, just half a can of pumpkin mixed with half a box of vanilla cake mix and some dark chocolate chips and extra bits of  Halloween candy thrown in (I chopped milk duds and whoppers)!  Yum! (J ate about 5 before I could even take that picture)

The next few birthday days were spent hanging out, surviving the hurricane (we had a lot of light flickering), scary movie marathons (I couldn’t get enough, J was really scared though), scrabble, eating(anything and everything) and drinking (J bought me a bottle of Belvedere for my birthday!) and just plain being fat.  On Wednesday J made me scrambly eggs for breakfast with our champagne!  Champagne is good at pretty much anytime of day.  I got lots of great presents/gadgets and I have the best Hubberoo ever!  He really made my birthday super special and I am glad we got to spend so much quality time together before he goes away.

We went out to dinner for our last night together/my ACTUAL birthday at a cute place down the street.   I decided to be a hippie and J wore his fangs.

I wear my sunglasses at night.

We were served by a nun who gave us free shots of tequila (I just remembered that right now as I am typing) and free scary candy when she had to tell us that they were out of dessert.  How can you be out of dessert?  I let it slide because all I actually wanted after dinner was a plate of fries (which they didn’t have either.  I guess they didn’t know that it was my birthday).  So we went off in search of some fries.  The great thing about this is that we have a billion restaurants/bars around us so we didn’t have to go far.  At our next stop we tried a crazy Japanese Single Malt which I think was called Yamazaki (but don’t take my word for it} and even though I really hate single malt, this one had more of a brandy flavor with a scotchy aftertaste.  It was really nice and I would definitely suggest. We didn’t stay out late because J had to catch a REALLY early flight in the morning (sadface).  Yes, he is leaving again, but only for a month this time.  I think I may live. Or not.  And don’t worry, on the way back from the airport I didn’t have to pick up any hitchhikers to take with me into the city, I made it back before 6am.

To sum it all up I had the best birthday/week and I can’t wait to do it again next year!

 

Byeeee.