Happy New Year!

   The Christmas season was a welcome relief from the stressful semester we had at the college.  Budget cuts, as well as normal teaching  and design requirements, made this fall term feel more tiring that usual.
   Christmas Eve and Day our nuclear family was together at our home.  We did nothing grand,  mainly hung out, wrapped presents (Finished making some!) and baked/ate/slept.   My husband and I finished  our Christmas Eve wrapping/distribution duties at 3 a.m., and the children woke up at 5 a.m. ouch!
    The 26th saw my mother, one of my sisters and her son visiting us.  It was a lovely visit and we pulled out the china as well as my grandmother's crystal.

 This crystal has been in boxes for about 19 years, since I never felt I had the proper place to display/store it.  On top of that, with the number of times we have moved since we were married, I never felt we were in a place where I could unpack it without having to repack it all in a year or two.  It was like greeting an old friend to see it on the table.

   We opened our Christmas crackers and told the really bad jokes we found inside, and proudly sported our paper crowns in a very stylish manner.
  

My very chic nephew, daughter and husband in their Christmas crowns

grandma helping with great-grandmother's  "special glass"

   Now this was also the evening that the big snow storm hit the East Coast.  I had thought that they would be spending the night - this was what we had talked about, but my sister got it into her head that she had to drive home that night - even though we told them the storm was going to peter out by morning.  So, what is normally a 2.75 - 3 hour drive took them six hours.  Crazy!

   We traveled during the next week, but more on that in another post - I haven't had my coffee yet!