A Thrilling Christmas!

Yay for Christmas!
This past week David and I traveled to Chapel Hill, aka the thrill, to visit with the Horrance/Gary clan for Christmas.

Once we got into town we picked up my bro Donovan, grabbed some food at Armadillo, and headed to a UNC Basketball game. I forgot to take any pictures at the game...

so this shot of my new boyfriend is courtesy of tarheelblue.com. Go Heels! Tyler Hansborough played awesome and helped our boys continue their undefeated streak by cruising past UC Santa Barbara.

After the game, and some last minute shopping, we had dinner over at my Nani's with some of my relatives that were in town. Here are David and Donovan discussing world politics.

The entire weekend/week was filled with lots of amazing food. First up, shrimp curry! My Nani made some delicious curry that was very spicy. Unfortunately, David is allergic to shrimp, but Nani made some special chicken curry just for him :) !

Here are Aunt Chantal (my dad's sister, whom we like to call Chauntie) and Bruce (her husband) enjoying spending time at the Nani's.

Wait a second, where did this picture of a hot rocker come from? Oh yeah! It's me :). After dinner with the family it was time to visit with some of my friends from high school. We were pretty tame most of the weekend and enjoyed playing guitar hero at my house.

Josh and Emily aren't so sure about my guitar hero skills.

Good thing Sarah was there to show us how it is done. Do you notice David sleeping on the couch behind her? Poor thing. We kept him up way past his bedtime every night! He is going to be a mess at work on Thursday.

Here is Hadley pretending to play, while Josh pushes the buttons for her.
Look at those acting skills!

Sunday night consisted of a low key dinner at my rents house. We ate mulligatawny, a curried Indian soup. I was feeling a sicky, so I only got to eat a little bit :(.

Ta Dah! The Nani! Always watching...

Twas the night before Christmas and Michelle came home! Yay! She only had a day off from Stompadu, so she came home for Christmas even though it was for less than 48 hours. While she was here Michelle taught us a STOMP routine. Here is Michelle helping the boys practice. David needed a little more help than most :).

Ahhhh, Christmas morning. WAKE UP SLEEPY HEADS! Because we are all a little older now, and therefore more sleep deprived, Christmas at our house always starts a little late.

But I was up first, so I took pictures of all the presents.

First order of business, opening the stockings! My mom did all the stockings again this year. In the past, David and I have done stockings for each other, but this year we decided to spend a little more on presents, so stockings were out of the question! Thanks to my loverly mother we still had wonderful surprises in our stockings.

And since it is Christmas....time to give my mom a break! That's right dad and donz, your turn to do the dishes! We didn't even have to ask, they simply volunteered (despite Donovan's angry look, he did sign up for this).

Noon already? Must be time for presents! Here is a beautiful scarf I knitted myself for my grandmother. I had been working on it since March, and it wasn't quite as long as I hoped, but it still works as a scarf. The funny part was when my Nani opened it and asked me, "What is it?". Yikes is it that bad?

Here I am displaying my favorite gift from David, a new corduroy jacket! Yay! Thanks babe. And Donovan is sporting his new pj pants we picked out for him.

This gift was one that I was most excited about giving. I got my sister and David season salt from Bojangles! They both love the seasoning that comes on the fries at Bojangles, so I got them each a pack of season salt so they can make their own Bo fries at home.

Every year my mom makes her famous Pavlova cake, other wise know as a baked meringue with whip cream and fruit. Delicious!

Here is do do head eating the left over pavlova cake off of a knife. Man that stuff is good.

Where is my mom through out all of the festivities? Always in the kitchen! She worked so hard, non-stop to make some delicious meals possible. Yummy Lamb dinner, breakfast burritos, and ham with sweet potato casserole and corn bread pudding! You do too much mom! But we do appreciate it! In fact, after spending last Christmas with the Harris' in Florida, I had forgotten how hectic and chaotic our Christmas can be. I needed a whole day to recover after I got back home. Or as some like to say, I needed a vacation from my vacation!

It was so much fun to spend time with our relatives. Here are Chauntie and Kenny representing the Deez side of the family.

And here are the Garys, my mom's brother Mark, and his daughter Linda. And the best Christmas surprise ever? My cousin Linda is pregnant! Yay! We are so excited for her. Here we are looking at her ultrasound pictures.

Here is the proud Gary family, Uncle Mike, husband Michael Adams, Uncle Mark, and preggy Linda, who is barely showing.

Ah, and one of the funniest parts of the whole weekend was what my dad wanted for Christmas. After a musical Sunday school lesson, he determined that the only gift he wanted was my mom to play Handel's Messiah every time he walked in the house. Here he is enjoying his music at full volume. It was hilarious.

Man Christmas went by so fast! We had a great time visiting with friends and family and got way too many good presents. Thanks everyone! Let's all do this again next year shall we?