Bremas, New Years, and 11 Days Off

You may or may not have noticed I took a little break from blogging over the holidays. What's new, right? Always taking breaks, this one. I had 11 glorious days off work in which I planned to do all kinds of things around the house in addition to the annual Christmas tour, but I'm sure you're surprised to hear absolutely nothing got done.

I take that back...

I drank a whole lot of vodka and ate a whole lot of crappy food. Not one of my prouder weeks in the past year, but hey, can't do anything about it now but try to work it all off.

As usual I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy living in the moment, and the few I did take are from the trusty old iphone. We started out the Christmas tour with dinner at my aunt's house on Christmas Eve. After dinner and socializing with the family, we gather everyone into one room for The Christmas Story. My uncle used to read this every year, but has since passed the torch. This year, my cousin Drew read it with some help from his youngest daughter.

My bro and Monkey, loving the story

After The Christmas Story, everyone plays a white elephant gift game, but JB and I take off and head to my dad's house for their annual Christmas Eve party that my stepmom hosts for her side of the family. It was a smaller group this year than last, but my stepsister from LA was up visiting with her family, so we had most of the stepsisters together.

Just missing Stephers

My dad found this little gem, which is a book full of different pages with different topics that you fill in the blanks on such as favorite color and actor and your best friends at the time. I'm pretty sure this was actually my stepsister's book first and I found it when I was 9 1/2 and erased all of her answers and added my own. This was the last page of the book and what a grand finale it was...

Say what?  I posted this on Instagram and got some great comments.

We took our mandatory birthday shots for me (not Jesus) at midnight, had a little more family time, and then went to bed. We headed home the next morning after we opened our stockings (stalkings??) and had JB's parents and brother over to our house for dinner. We hung out in our PJ's all day and played with his mom's iPad mini since mine hadn't arrived yet and looked up all the cool stuff we want to do in Greece and all the food we are going to eat...

See, still in our jammies, no showers.  Hot.

My favorite in-laws!

He's available ladies, he and the tree parted ways that night

Love her so much!

Hubs and I haven't gotten each other gifts since our first Christmas together due to the buying of the house and getting married and going to Europe and all that jazz, so even though they were little things, I was excited to have a couple of gifts under the tree this year.

A couple.  As in, literally two whole presents.

My Bremas present was a collaboration from a few different people (JB, in-laws, mom & stepdad). It was scheduled to arrive the day after Christmas and actually came on Christmas Eve while we were at the movies, so I had to wait until the day after Christmas for my iPad to arrive. We stayed put all day to make sure we were around when it arrived.

The next day, I went up to spend the day with my mom who is recovering from major back surgery. She is doing so great! The doctor and all the nurses kept saying how well she was doing and even the physical therapist didn't know why he was there because she was moving around so well. I'm very proud of her and excited for her to have a better quality of life once she is completely healed.

My dad took me, my brother, and JB to the last regular season Niners game on the 30th, which was a pretty big game because they clinched the NFC West!! And wouldn't you know it, I didn't get one single picture of the four of us decked out in Niners gear (probably cuz I'm a Pats fan...). I did get this pic from our lower reserved seats though:

We were in traffic longer than we were at the game, but it was totally worth it.

For New Year's Eve we went to my friend's house downtown. She and her friend live on either side of the same duplex, so they took out the middle fence in the back yard and had a joint gathering. It was fun to dress up, but still go somewhere low-key and be with friends. Lots of beer pong was played. I seriously played the games of my lifetime! I usually suck at beer pong, but that night, I was magical.

Since there's not a single pic of me in the dress...

Me and the Hostess

Before heading out

All bundled up for beer pong!

So, none of the items on my staycation to-do list got done, but I did stay up late, sleep in late, spend time with family and friends, and enjoy every minute of it.

I hope everyone had a wonderful new year! Here's to wonderful things for all of us in 2013!!!