Cozy Christmas Dinner

I know it's a little early for Christmas...... but my parents leave Friday and they wanted to have a Christmas dinner with us before they left. Jon and I won't be home for the holidays so it meant a lot to everyone that we have this dinner together.

I wanted a good picture of Jon and I in front of our Christmas tree
Thought this one was cute.


My mom literally spent all day in the kitchen cooking and everything turned out AMAZING. She made banana bread, sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, fudge, a sweet potato pie, rolls, a spiral ham, mashed potatoes and green beans! This was for four people! I literally ate my weight in mashed potatoes, I'm definitely a true Irish girl!




Our dining room table full of food!


Funny thing about these sugar cookies, my mom had to cut them out by hand because with the move, there's no telling where our cookie cutters disappeared to. We must have overlooked them and threw them down in the cellar! I thought she did an awesome having to free hand the cookies.


As we ate dinner, we watched the movie Love Actually, one of my favorite movies during Christmas time.


My parents had never seen it so I thought it would be nice to watch it. I think we all cried a little, well my mom balled, but I'm pretty sure I saw a little tear in Jon's eye! AWWWE! I love this movie because it's about togetherness and love! (My friend Lyndsay would say I'm so clay right now!) It's a really well made movie, with so many different story lines that all connect in some way. I'm sure most of you have seen it, but if not you should definitely add it to your collection.

All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas dinner and I am so glad that they were able to spend two weeks with us here in Germany. We had such a blast together!

My parents are planning another family trip to Costa Rica in June and if our schedules don't conflict we'll be on a plane to the beach this summer! I would love to see my entire family, our trip to Costa Rica is a family tradition we've had for over 10 years. So we'll be crossing our fingers!

Tomorrow my parents head back to the states so we thought we'd just enjoy the day, walk around downtown one more time to see the Christmas festival and take it easy tonight. My mom is making minestrone tonight, we had to fit one more night of her cooking in before she left!

Also, I had to share this with everyone! Our cousin Beth sent me an email the other day and she had made this video on Jib Jab called Elf Yourself. She elved herself and her three baby girls and it was the cutest things ever! So of course I had to Elf my family. Beth and her girls were doing a disco, I thought we should to the Charleston! Here is our video: oh and I added Java our family dog into the video!



Have a great weekend!