Happy post-Christmas-almost-New-Years, blog! I haven’t had a chance to sit down with my camera and edit the “real” photos, so let’s re-visit Christmas 2014 via my Instagram. Here are the sugar cookies Josh and I made together before embarking on our Boise voyage this year. We used Fleeta’s 100% addictive sugar cookie recipe, and they turned out fabbuu. We donated all of them, but managed to snarf a few ourselves.

Gee this photo looked a lot less blurry on my tiny iphone screen. Here’s another shot of the Hallmark tree topper that my mother gave us last year. I was somewhat horrified to discover that she didn’t have a replacement, but she went out before we arrived and purchased a substitute glittery teal star until she finds the perfect one later.

Pops giving Maggie some love. This is the first time in…almost 20 years, perhaps, that my parents’ house was animal-free. My mother made my father wait until the holidays were over (deadline: January 1st) before bringing a new puppy home. Although I would have loved picking out a new puppy while we were in town, I had to respect her wishes. She has a stressful job, and who wants a stressed-out mom on Christmas? Not me!

The presents were plentiful this year. 2014 was a good year!

My father’s infamous lasagna, which is always magically delicious. It took about 5 days for us all to plow through it. Mmmmm.

On Christmas Eve, my brother and his new wife joined us for a present exchange. My brother’s fun sense of humor is really evident when he’s around Stephanie, and it makes me happy. His beard took me a while to get used to, though. When we met up for the Christmas Eve church service earlier that evening I had to stare at his face for a few minutes–he looks so much like my father, it’s eerie.

Speaking of beards, look at this weirdo! I have a great photo of the three bearded men standing together on my camera.

I’ve been obsessed with this particular mountain photo Josh took with his iphone for a while now, so one of my gifts to him was a canvas print of it. Beautiful.

Fresh books from Josh. He included the John Waters quote, because he cares.

And wouldn’t you know it? It snowed on Christmas Eve, so we had a white Christmas…and day after Christmas…and day after that…and a VERY white drive home, but it all turned out fine. No accidents. Thanks, snow tires!

A shameless animal begging for lasagna.

Turns out those ugly yellow foothills don’t look so bad with snow covering them.

Our second day in the snow. Not so bad…in 20 minute increments!

Day three in the snow. Loooooove.

I had requested quick-drying hair towels for Christmas, and my mother bought me two cute little towel turbans and Fleeta bought me a larger special hair towel for long hair, so now I’m SET.

Our last snowy walk.

Josh and his impressive snow man in the front yard. I built a smaller snowwoman (with breasts) in the backyard.

I did help him add the “hair”, though.

This little blurry iphone picture does not adequately convey how breathtaking these clouds were. Look at the face! It was really spectacular. I suppose being stuck in a car for multiple hours does have some redeeming qualities.

We left Tuesday night and made the entire 8-9 hour drive in one go, arriving late that Tuesday evening, so we had Wednesday through Sunday to spend with my family. Then we drove back to Seattle allllll day Monday. Due to the crazy amount of snow in the Blue Mountains, the drive took 10+ hours. Last night we were wiped, and then we both went back to work this morning. After work we celebrated Christmas again with Josh’s family at the New House…Good Times! Of course we’ll be working all week, because we don’t party on New Year’s any more, come ON! That’s KID STUFF (sigh).

Plenty of (clear and crisp) photos to come, and tomorrow instead of pounding booze I’ll be pounding coffee and blogging my year-in-review! Always helpful to remember what I spent the last year doing…maybe I’ll even share my resolutions…because this year I have a few.