family

Merry Belated Christmas, my friends! I hope you had a fabulous holiday! Christmas at the PBJ house was pretty low-key.

We opened presents, stayed in our PJs, and vegged out on frozen appetizers all day. Fortunately, our post-holiday plans have proven to be much more exciting.

While the thought of sticking around New England for a nor’easter was almost as tempting as getting a root canal, the family and I opted to head south for a little Florida sunshine. We were able to snag an earlier flight at the expense of having seats in the last row, which actually turned out to be awesome. Dan (my brother) and I had the entire row to ourselves.

Ample leg room was totally worth being seated 2 feet away from the bathroom on a flight where, apparently, everyone decided to stock up on beans for breakfast.

my sentiments exactly

I used the trip to catch up on some snacking and design work.

Obligatory cloud picture. Those are some fine cumulus-nimbus (that’s the only cloud formation I remember from Earth Science).

2.5 hours and a rough landing later (I swear our pilot was swigging vodka and coke the entire trip), we grabbed our bags and headed for my sister’s house to partake in Christmas, part deux.

Dinner started off with salad, but I decided to forego a photo because, well, it was salad. I’ll leave those pictures to the real HLBs. The showstopper of the meal was the main course: prime rib and baked mac and cheese soufflé.

I always claim I don’t like red meat. I lie. This was incredible.

Oh, and just a little Dom Pérignon. ( <- yup, definitely had to look up the spelling on that one).

I also polished off a peanut butter blossom cookie for dessert, which is barely worth mentioning after such a ridiculously extravagant meal.

Now I’m in bed feeling pleasantly satisfied and so excited to see what tomorrow holds.

I’ve been in such a depressive funk lately and this vacation is really reviving my spirit. It feels so nice to actually have something to blog about. I wish I had a life more often.

p.s. I just realized that this recap kinda sorta qualifies as a WIAW post. My first ever! (and probably only)

Does this make me an official real blogger?

Christmas always comes early in my house. Actually, it always comes late. Since the PBJ family is sprawled out across the entire east coast (with one little nut residing in Florida), it’s impossible to get us all together until right before the holidays. Then, apparently, it’s hard to keep us all together. Now that my sister is married, she has to share the holidays with her husband. Christmas Eve with him. Christmas with us. To ensure that she wouldn’t miss out on the usual Christmas Eve traditions, we decided to start celebrating one day early.

Our family traditions include cookie decorating, exchanging ornaments, and decorating the tree.

1. I thought my “cookie monster” idea was great. Irony, anyone? My siblings thought it was lazy. I guess spreading blue frosting over a cookie didn’t earn me any points for fine detail work.

2. Mom is a sucker for themes. This year she decided to give us each an ornament of our favorite childhood candy. Clearly my taste buds haven’t changed one bit.

3. My sister is an even bigger perfectionist than I am, so more often than not my brother and I sit back, relax, and let her take the reigns.

4. I’m just obsessed with this ornament.

The holiday is already off to an amazing start, and there’s so much more to come! Christmas tomorrow with the Grandmas, then heading to Florida on Wednesday for Christmas part deux with my sister!

Hope you all are enjoying a happy and blessed holiday!