Anna's First Christmas

Merry Christmas to all our faithful readers out there! We hope that you enjoyed the holiday this year as much as we did. Here are a few of the highlights from the Meyer house...

First off...definitely a white white white white Christmas. So much "white stuff", we're really quite sick of it. :P We now have somewhere north of 3 feet of snow and it's still going! Grammy and Poppy arrived on Tuesday and immediately set out on the joyous task of (you guessed it) shoveling the driveway...thankfully, one of our neighbors took pity on them and brought his snow toy with plow attachment down and helped clear out the foot of snow that had accumulated in our drive since the weekend. Tim especially appreciated this, as he had to head down to Vegas for the day for a meeting, and so he got to come home at 2 AM to a driveway he could actually drive into.

Christmas Eve we had a slight change of plans and didn't head up to Tim's parents'...shockingly, due to more snow. So, we had a quiet dinner here are our house and made the evening special by opening up a long awaited bottle of Brunello from our last trip to Italy in '06 (intended as a celebration of Anna's birth, but due to nursing it ended up being a celebration of her first Christmas instead).

Our little wine aficionado in the making! ;o) (No, she didn't really drink any).

Mandy and Edy also spent most of the day cooking as much as could be prepared ahead of time for the 12 guests we had for Christmas dinner (we are blessed to have so much of our family able to spend the holidays together!). The end result? On Christmas day, the menu was thus:

First Course:

Cocktails and Champagne, Olives, Cheese, Divinity, Mozzerella sticks, and Petit Fours from Grandma Meyer

Second Course:

Canneloni (forever thanking you for this recipe, Madonna), Lobstah Macaroni and Cheese, Pear and Walnut Salad with Blue Cheese and Huckleberry Vinagrette, Grape Salad, Fluffy Stuff. Paired with a Spanish Rioja, an Australian Shiraz, and a Californian Chardonnay.

Third Course:

Pecan Pie, Chocolate Cream Puff Dessert, Coffee

Needless to say, we were stuffed! Why all the details? Well, for one, we're foodies...and for another, I intend to post some recipes later, so this is a reminder. ;o) We also opened gifts, played Catch Phrase, and even rocked the Rock Band game (courtesy of Scott and Beka).

Our year and a half old niece, Lily, was much more into Christmas this year, whereas Anna's favorite gift was the super shiny wrapping paper that her book (Duck for President) came in. She got a ton of great toys and books from her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins this year, so the kid certainly has no excuse to be bored until at least age 16. For her parents, on the other hand, our best Christmas present by far was simply watching Anna experience it...she is the best Christmas gift we could ever ask for, and is more fun than that Barrel Full of Monkeys I got as a kid. ;o)

Yesterday was spent relaxing...Tim broke open a few of his new games, and he and Dad tried their hand at being Tiger Woods (watch out PGA) and then Tim and I beat each other up in Lego Indiana Jones. Tim also put together Anna's Christmas present--stage 2 of her ExerSaucer! There were an amazing number of parts and pieces (the homemade egg nog we were drinking probably didn't help to speed the process along), but eventually the mischief was managed. Anna seems to love all the little boinks, squeaks, fishies, turtles and flowers. This thing is like a real-life Dr. Seuss chair. Way to go, Dad! Now if she could just figure out how to eat those fishies...

Well, back out to shoveling snow.