Christmas Vacation

What a difference a year makes!  Most significantly, I’ve been at my job a little longer this Christmas and could take more than one day off for Christmas so I could actually get to relax and enjoy the time with my family and friends.  Actually this year, I only worked one day from December 23rd through January 2nd.  It was blissful! 

My first day off, Anne, Kate and I met downtown for lunch to break me into one of Winston’s finest traditions that I, amazingly after 9 years of living here, have not yet participated in.

Skippy’s Hot Dogs!  Being the hot dog connoisseur that I am, I don’t know how I’ve lived my whole life without trying Skippy’s.  Game changer.  Watch out Zweigels, you’re on notice.

Fortunately,  I had started the day off with this….

A little damage control for the week to come!

Saturday – Christmas Eve – my husband took off for work around noon for his second of six twelve hour shifts that he was saddled with over Christmas and my parents arrived about an hour later.  (I don’t think he planned that, but it’s awfully suspicious….)  Sister, brother and brother-in-law made their way up from Charlotte and we had dinner together, then went over to campus to look at the Christmas lights.  I’ve never been on campus when there was literally NO ONE there and it was incredibly peaceful, although a tiny bit creepy.

Katie and Dylan posing in front of the dorm that they first met in, all those years ago.  (Six? Seven?)

Wake Forest is now responsible for both the marriages in our family!  Go Deacs!

Matt was able to get off work a little early (which NEVER happens) and we all went to bed with visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads.  Or food comas from all the holiday food.  Your choice.

Christmas morning dawned early (10 am) at our house… and the present opening chaos ensued. 

The aftermath…

Quickly followed by lots of naps and another meal.  Does every family’s Christmas involve a lot of napping and eating?

Unfortunately Matt had to switch over to night shifts that night, so we said good-bye to him at 7 pm…. and then hustled to get out of the house when he came home around 7 am so he could sleep.  We went to brunch at Village Tavern, and then the rest of the Claffey clan hit the road to spend a few days down in Charlotte at Katie and Dylan’s house.

We both worked Tuesday, and then we hit the road on Wednesday to go down to Lincolnton to see Matt’s family.

We spent Wednesday in Lincolnton with the family, and Matt’s sister Micah, her boyfriend Derek and his two boys Alec and Cameron met us for dinner and a gift exchange later that night.  We had a great time catching up with family, and spent some time next door visiting with Nanta and Pa to celebrate Nanta’s birthday too.  Shamefully I did not take any pictures of our family time together, although I am also going to blame my sis-in-law because she just got a new fancy pants camera so I’ll pretend I was deferring to her to have the opportunity to be family photographer.  (She didn’t either.  We both failed.)

In fact, the only thing I took a picture of was the gift that Matt’s Nanta gave us….

Oh, Nanta.

We spent the night on Wednesday, woke up Thursday and said good-bye to our pupdog left in the care of his grandparents and hit the road for Nashville.  And with that, our whirlwind 4 days with family came to an end!  It still went quickly, but it definitely beat last year when Christmas was squeeze in to my one day off and I felt like we barely got time for a hug and some sticky buns before it was time to say good-byes!