holidays

What is normally a 4 hour drive down to Nicollet turned into a 5 1/2+ hour trip! We drove right in to the storm of the season. New tires on our SUV helped tremendously! We arrived on the 23rd and spent 2 days with my fam. It was so wonderfully relaxing! We chilled, ate and watched movies. Beautiful stockings hung on the mantel:
Our Christmas Eve tradition is to have soup and sandwiches for lunch and then hors d'oeuvres for dinner. I ate way too many cookies:)
We got to witness the Raider machine (a.k.a. my dad's 1950's snowblower he found at an auction this summer for $25) in action:
Here are the "kids" all together:
On Christmas day we headed up to the cities to visit Mike's fam.
Anna and Timmy got some new outfits from Kristen & Jake:
Dog Pile on the couch:
Mikey and John made Christmas dinner.
Course #1 & 2: Shrimp Bisque and Spinach Salad (our winter favorite that I've already posted a couple times)
The 3rd Course: Peppercorn Crusted Steaks on the grill & Smashed Potatoes.
Mikey's plate:
Mandy's plate (I seriously wasn't even hungry at this point):
"Dessert" was Mocha Kahlua... it's to die for!

Sienna provided the entertainment all day:
On the 26th, we ventured to Midtown Global Market (MGM). We ate at Holy Land restaurant. Mikey and I had the buffet:
My favorite thing was the Greek Salad I put together. Here are the 'rents enjoying themselves:
After some inspiration at MGM, Mikey wanted to do a spanish themed dinner.
Course #1: Spinach salad with chorizo and spanish cheese (?)
Course #2: Shrimp tapas! This was my favorite thing all weekend! I really don't know what was in the sauce but we built little sandwiches on a baguette starting with pickeled red onion, grilled shrimp and then the sauce. It was so fantastic! Very smokey with awesome flavor combinations.
Course #3: Rack of lamb
It was like there was Spanish BBQ sauce on the meat. Pretty darn good. Again, I wasn't even hungry for course #3.
I should mention that we enjoyed a bunch of John's homemade wine at all the meals.
I should also mention that Kramer made the trek down to the cities! He's so easy to entertain especially at Christmas time with all the empty boxes and bags... lots of pouncing!
Here we are towards the end of our trip feeling relaxed:
We didn't plan to match, honestly.
We arrived home on the 27th to a total winter disaster! We got 22 inches of snow and ice while we were gone. Mikey had to head off to work by 11am so I spent the afternoon shoveling and breaking up ice... for 4 hours! I had multiple conversations with myself about how we should really move... either someplace warmer or to a condo at least. I also convinced myself that we should never travel again with the threat of a storm. If we could have kept up with the crud while it fell, I don't think it would have been as bad. Every square inch had to be broken and "cut" out with a metal shovel and then scooped up with a big scoop shovel. 2 inches of ice on top of 22 inches of snow is not fun! I did all of this by hand:
We have such limited space to pile it all up:
Ugh:
I took a break Sunday night until Mikey got home and then we both went out and spent another hour on the driveway.
Even after all the shoveling, our back steps remained an ice skating rink:
Monday morning the plow went by at 9am and piled a foot of ice chunks at the end of our driveway. Mikey worked from 6:30a-2:30p so I got to spend another hour shoveling while he was at work. I left the pile on the sidewalk for him to take care of while I went to work at 4pm. He managed to break a shovel doing that job so we now have 2 new fiberglass (read: heavy duty) shovels and an ice pick.
The ice is horrendous here!

I've enjoyed being off of work the past few days. Tomorrow night I'm hoping Mikey gets off of work in time for us to catch a couple bands playing for New Years.

I'm not planning to blog every meal going in to 2010 but I'll highlight some of Mikey's creations. I also need to do a weigh-in next week at work. Updates will be a little less frequent but hopefully more entertaining!