Christmas Cheer!

I have made it back from my marathon Christmas celebration this weekend, and have finally gotten most of my stuff put away and organized!

I hope everyone had an amazing holiday and had as much fun as I did!

So this will be a smorgazboard of updates from the last week. So many updates that I had to make up a word for it.

Uh-huh, yeah.

I'm not sure if you all know, but Matt's family has an amazing cookie recipe that has been passed down in the family. It is the Butter Cookie recipe. And it is delicious (when I say delicious, I mean, President Truman would ask for these cookies personally when the recipe was first originated.) When Matt asked me to marry him, I received this recipe, along with all of the hardware to make it.

Now, I can't tell you what's in the recipe, or how to make it. But I can tell you that it involves a cookie press (difficult, difficult piece of equipment for this job) and about this much butter:

Don't be afraid. Just be ready to unzip your pants a little to be able to fit into them later.

Paula Deen would be so proud.

Side note: I need to meet Paula Deen at some point in my lifetime. She is only one of the greatest women. Ever.


So you mix all of your secret ingredients together and then you put your dough into the cookie press and start pressing out lines of cookies. This proves to be much more difficult than one might imagine.

See those air pockets. Yeah. Those aren't supposed to be there, but gosh darn it, I just couldn't get any better ones.

But be warned. This recipe (should you ever receive it, or one like it) makes about a million cookies in one batch. No really. See for yourself.

Oh, so many cookies. Mmmmmmm.

Now, on to the actual Christmas events. I first went to Wilmington with Matthew to celebrate his birthday (Christmas Eve baby!) and we had a delicious lunch of prime rib, yorkshire pudding, mashed potatoes, green beans, and gravy. I will not go into detail of this meal because simply listing the ingredients has made my mouth start to salivate. 

After that I headed to my folk's house in central NC and we celebrated our Christmas on Christmas Eve. That way we could head out bright and early to go see the rest of the family in a different location in NC on Christmas Day. 

I don't have too many pictures of the loot, but there was a tear jearker one involved. 

This was drawn by my brother. My younger-holy-cow-how-did-he-do-that brother. This simply took my breath away.

If you haven't seen pictures of me and Mr. Fiance, this is all you need. It's like looking into a mirror.

Scary good. It even tricked my cat, Squirt, into giving the picture version of me nose kisses.

Let me also mention that this crazy, talented brother of mine drew this in 2 DAYS. How on earth??

Snoopy also got a great gift as well:

These winter cold spurts are just proving too much for poor ol' snoop-dog. So he got himself a nice fancy jacket! How cute!

So yes, back to when we went to be with the rest of our family on Christmas day. It was so much fun! I rarely get to see the rest of my family, so it is always so nice to spend time with them. I cannot believe how fast the younger ones are growing! Here's a few pictures of them opening (tearing into) the gifts :)

The adults then played dirty Santa, and I must say, I got my gifts stolen the most. BY FAR!  :)

I really did have a blast. I always wish we could stay longer!

On an ending note to this crazy, long, picture filled post, the snow was a lovely surprise this year. I have never experienced a white Christmas and it was a wonderful cherry on top of the sundae for me. (Mmmm, Sundae's!)

(Not sure why that turned out so blue! Oh well!)

Hope everyone had a Merry, wonderful, magical Christmas!

I'm off to go make myself a Sundae, and to take care of one very sick man of mine :(