Christmas at Mima's

Well, we made it in time for Christmas dinner at Mima's. Actually, we were the first ones there. We got there at 1:00 because we made such good time on the highway.  We had quite a ride, stopping at Sheetz for a drink and breakfast and to cash in our lottery tickets.  My mom always gives everyone scratch off tickets and this year I was the big winner.  I got a free ticket and $5.  So we paid for our breakfast with the $5 but still got $2 back and got a free ticket.  My free ticket gave us another $4 that we can cash in....but we're going to stop while we're ahead haha.  We had a nice drive....minus driving through the correctional facility that was a little creepy haha.  

We were told we'd eat at 2 so we changed out of our travel clothes and waited for others to arrive. No one else arrived until 2 and then Tim, Vasti, and Bella were the last to arrive around 3. We didn't end up sitting down to eat til almost 4.  We had a delicious meal with pasta, chicken, stuffed mushrooms, rice balls and much more! After dinner, some of us watched an episode of "Seinfeld" and then we all opened presents. Peter and I received very nice gifts of wine, olive oil made from Aunt Grace and Uncle Michael's villa in Italy, a picnic kit, cheese/cracker tray, and several very nice ornaments for our tree. We then had dessert of pies, jello, and cookies that I made and brought with us. It was all very yummy. We left Mima's after helping clear the table and packing up all of our things and arrived back in Philly around 10:30 PM. We hung out with Andrew for a bit but we were pretty tired and went to bed before too long. It was a tiring day, but a fun day.  

We woke up at 6:30 to shower and pack everything up.  Here we are at 8:15 AM when we were pulling out of my parents' driveway.  You can tell we were pretty tired...we didn't go to bed til about 1 AM the night before!

Pulling out of my mom and dad's driveway....you can tell the sun had just come up haha.

People gathered in Mima's kitchen munching before dinner was served:

Beautiful Isabella!

Aunt Grace with Isabella and her new present-a snowglobe from Mima.

Mom and Dad Formica :)

Peter was taking most of these pictures....luckily Laura was at least paying attention to him haha.

Aunt Grace is always snapping pictures so Peter got a picture of her doing what she does best!

Mima and Aunt Grace...this is such a good picture!

Tim and Vasti about to open a present...