Hey All! I left off from our arriving in Texas after our Cleveland trip.
In the evening of Christmas Eve we attended the candlelight ceremony at my Mom and Pete’s church. (Love my sister photo bombing us… It was like she was there, lol!). I realllly did miss her so much- her and Kevin went to Peru to spend Christmas with his fam. We face-timed the day of though, and it was fun to virtually meet some of Kevin’s family!
The Candlelight service is one of my favorites of the whole year.
The service & music was just moving- my eyes sweated a few times during the ceremony for sure. Easily one of my favorite hours of the entire Christmas season- taking time to worship & remember the true meaning of this chaotic, fun, wonderful season.
When we returned home my mom put out the most delicious shrimp cocktail & cheese with a pepper jam and crackers. Okay- I neeed to get that pepper jam! This is such a scrumptious appetizer to whip up; I’m gonna remember this for next time we host!
I also had to share the Christmas table my mom assembled. Each set of plates is unique, and they were not all bought from the same place. Look how beautifully it all goes together though!
I always get home decor tips/tricks from her when I visit.
For dinner we had grilled romaine with parmesan cheese and tomatoes (post the romaine scare- don’t worry it was the safe stuff 😉 ).
For the guys, Pete made some mouth-watering lamb tenderloin. DJ raves about Pete’s grilling.
My mom made the vegan version for us!!! Below are little seitan riblets. Gooooodness gracious, I think this is my favorite faux meat dish everr.
We had some of my mom’s famous cornbread… I could eat this straight out of the pan with a spoon. It’s insanely good.
Roasted potatoes with rosemary, yum!…
And the whole doggone delicious spread!..
After dinner we watched the movie BlacKkKlansman. It is a really thought-provoking movie, with a fast paced, intriguing story line, and a gut-wrenching, powerful ending. It’s one of those endings you forget to breathe.
After getting a deep night sleep, we woke up to Christmas!
Our usual pattern for Christmas morning is presents, breakfast, stockings. This year we made an Instapot egg casserole with bacon for the guys and a veggie egg casserole for us.
Time for stockings!! They are so sweet to still do them for us even as adults <3 Pete and my mom make one for each other each year too which I think is just precious.
Stocking stuffers! Look at all those See’s Candies suckers! *heart eyes*
In the afternoon, I went on a 7-mile training run.
I don’t know what was in the air, but I was just having the smoothest of runs while I was there. Christmas night was tons of fun, but I’ll save that for the next post 🙂
Question for you:
- What’s your favorite thing you’ve done so far this year? cheesy question, I knoww 😉
xo <3
