The 17th - Birthday and Christmas

December 17th was a big day - it was my birthday AND we got together with Curt's side of the family to celebrate Christmas!

The day started out like any other Saturday, coaching. I'm not big on my birthday, especially now that I'm getting older, so no one at skating knew it was my birthday :) It was our last Saturday session before Christmas, so Santa visited the little kids - it was nice because I didn't have to worry about an actual lesson plan, once Santa gets on the ice things get a little crazy, and after he leaves we just play games with everyone on the ice. The rest of the day was lessons as usual.

After skating, I made a quick stop at home to get changed and gather things to take to the party. Curt and I had agreed that we wouldn't do birthday or Christmas presents this year because of our trip -then, before we went away, we found out that a local jewellery store was having a liquidation sale so we went to check it out. Curt ended up getting a new wedding band (his original band has two diamonds in it, and they keep falling out; after it got fixed this last time, he decided not to wear it so he doesn't loose the diamonds). While in the store, we found a beautiful tanzanite ring and Curt insisted that we get it! So that was supposed to be it, however, he went back to the store and found a blue topaz pendant (December's birthstone), and got that for me too! I know, I'm spoiled.

After opening my gift, we were off to Curt's brothers house for our early Christmas. This get together was just for the immediate family - Curt's parents, his two brothers and their wives, and our five nephews.

Once we were all there, the first thing on the agenda was opening presents! We stopped exchanging presents with everyone a few years ago, but my mother and father in-law still buy for everyone, and the aunts and uncles buy for the nephews.

I forgot my camera, which is really unfortunate because I would have loved to take pictures of the boys opening their gifts. Curt made some really cool gifts for them - they are big fans of superheros (Spiderman, Batman, Superman), so he printed some images from the internet onto transparencies and framed them...the boys were pretty impressed!

My in-laws gave me, among other things, some coffee for our new Cuisinart Keurig, and the storage drawer that I wanted for keeping the K-cups handy and organized.

After presents we had a great dinner - turkey and ham, and all the trimmings! Thanks to my MIL for preparing everything, and to my BIL and SIL for hosting, again!

Once the boys were in bed, the adults had an really nice evening - the boys always end up in the basement playing poker, and the girls end up upstairs chatting. This year, our girl chat revolved around Pinterest and blogging :) It was a great evening, and as always, both Curt and I reflected on how much we enjoy hanging out with his brothers and their families - we really should do it more often!