Me, Myself, and Ines: 25 Days of BlogMas

Thursday: December 25, 2014

Merry Christmas!

Today was a wonderful day!

My whole family slept in until 11 am and I woke up to the smell of pancakes and bacon.

Usually my mom makes pancakes every Sunday but Christmas is the perfect excuse to make pancakes during the week.

After breakfast, it was time to open presents!

It's funny because now that we are older, the presents under the tree look different. It's not big boxes full of you sets, DVD players, tvs or sterios.

And some Christmases are different than others. In the past it's looked empty under the tree, but this Christmas is the first in a long time that we've had gifts spilling out from both sides.

Regardless, it's never about the presents! It's about the company.

So we spent about an hour opening ll our gifts.

My parents got me a MacBook Pro (which doubled for a graduation gift too)

My brother and his girlfriend got me a Vera Bradley curling wand holder and a coach name tag lanyard. I also got tons of chocolate and little stalking stuffers.

There was wrapping paper, bags and fissure paper everywhere, but this picture doesn't do it justice.

After opening presents, the cleaning started.

Some houses do spring cleaning, but my house does Christmas cleaning.

And guess who actually cleaned the whole house; vacuuming, mopping and dusting included? ME? Because my parents were in the kitchen cooking for 4 hours. And, that's because we had company coming over for dinner... Brendan and my brother's girlfriend.

My family consists of me, my brother and my mom and dad. The one aunt and one uncle I have living in the United States (actually both within 15 minutes from my house) my dad doesn't talk to. Besides that, all my relatives, ALL of them, live in Portugal.

I guess you could say that my parents, specifically more my dad, have a hard time letting other people into my family. The fact that my dad came up to me this past weekend and asked me to invite my boyfriend to Christmas dinner really meant a lot! I'm not the type to invite my boyfriend either without my parents being fully excepting of it.

So, I was excited!

Brendan was too! He knows how closed off and reserved my family can be. He's so understanding too. He knows it's not him, it's just the way my parents are. When I told him he was invited to Christmas dinner he was ecstatic!

He came over around 4:30 and we were eating by 5:30.

We enjoyed honey ham and seafood casserole.

There was also asparagus and baked potatoes.

Brendan's personal favorite was my dad's rice. I think he could have eaten the whole pot!

Then after dinner we dug right into dessert!

Completely 100% home made, my mom made a three tiered desserts. Yellow egg custard on the bottom with Portuguese cookie crumbles sprinkled on top. Then chocolate mousse is added to make the middle later. Finally whipped cream is the too layer. Usually we roast some almond shaving and sprinkle them all over but because Brendan has a tree nut allergy, we substituted almonds for chocolate shavings.