Red Truck Tales: The Great Christmas Adventure, Part M

Oh, Christmas! I was very lucky this year to have a lot of time to spend up north, 5 whole days of family and festivities. My holidays started even earlier, however, with a solstice celebration in Portland attended by my very own mother and brother, Matt. The trip consisted mostly of eating, in various forms, but included other super awesome activities as rock climbing and sock shopping. Let's start there.....

Finishing up presents...

Quite a mess! Notice Matt sleeping obliviously in the corner!

Decorating Shannon and Adam's tree

Sophie helping

Ghost mama

On Monday we had the solstice celebration at my house, complete with dinner and a candlelight ceremony from mom. Very fitting way to celebrate, best new tradition yet!

The Blys

Jump ahead a week or so and it's Christmas eve at my Mom's. We had Mom, Matt, Deb and Denali, Brandi and her baby Jasper, and Peter. Yes, Peter! Live and in the flesh! Cookie decorating, lots of baby time and some presents, it was great.

Deb

Chef de Chocolate

Easter egg dying? No! Christmas cookies!

I managed somehow to end up with not one single picture of the cookies, but I can assure you they were fantastic- especially the red ones.

Brandi, Deb, and beautiful Jasper

I'd say the little boys but, well...

Matt

Possibly the best picture I've ever taken.

I headed down to Oak Harbor after the party, but that's a story for another time. Last event in this chapter is dinner at Cindy's the Sunday following Christmas. She made fabulous sole en papillote and creme caramel for desert. Dinners at Cindy's have been my first experience with pairing desserts with dessert liqueurs, and it's pretty fun. It really makes dessert it's own course when it's served with it's own beverage, it was just amazing getting to have framboise liqueur to complement the creme caramel rather than just the last bit of the same glass of wine you just had with dinner. It's fancier. Anyways...