"Raising Souls"

"Raising Souls"

Friday, January 6, 2012

The First Official Stanbary Christmas in MN!

Until this year I had not spent a single Christmas in MN. I always went home to WI to be with my family and celebrate "our traditions". This year, it was finally time to try and begin our own family Christmas Traditions here in MN.

We spent a couple hours on Christmas eve day doing some last minute shopping. It was not so fun. Then we went to spend some time with Jeremy's family and eat some cheesy broccoli soup, taco, dip, meat balls, and treats! Yumm! We exchanged gifts with each other and enjoyed getting Risa's creative and fun stockings with goodies inside.

Then Jeremy, Augustine, and I headed to Holy Spirit church in St. Paul (our home parish) for their vigil Christmas mass. It was lovely and Augustine did pretty well - we even got seats!

Although we weren't to hungry we decided to stick to our plan and go out to eat. Something that is a rare and special treat for us. Bucca de Beppos is right down the road from us and we've wanted to try it for some time so we decided to go there. It had a very holiday feel to it and is a really fun Catholic Italian restaurant - there is even a round "Pope Table" featuring our current pope.



Augustine kept busy sucking ice chips off the table (gross right?) while we waited for food. We had a delicious meal of caprese salad and pesto pizza and had our order of pasta to go. We were excited to get Augustine ready for bed and our huge screen movie playing. Augustine was in a great mood and helped Daddy set up the big screen movie!



Christmas Eve was different this year but also very good! We feel we are on a great path to creating our own Christmas traditions!

Christmas morning was Toaster Strudel, gift opening, and a great mix of Christmas music (thanks Dad!)!



Then we had a delicious and yummy brunch with more opening of gifts and playing with new toys.



Around 1:00pm we headed on a loooong, but sunny, 5 hr drive to WI to continue the celebrations with my side of the family!

I felt like my advent preparations helped me to really focus on the true meaning of Christmas and let go of my desires for my usual WI Christmas, and it really was a very fun and enjoyable time to share with my little family.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

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