Christmas 2007 was good though!

Double posting, because there is positive to report on as well.

Alex and I made our first official trip to the homeland as a married couple. We survived, just barely, and our New Year's Resolution for this year is to convince my parents that we are, indeed, adults. Apparently they missed the memo that we are staring down the barrel of 30 AND married AND that we make it through our day to day lives just fine. And while I don't believe that marriage or age really signifies adulthood, my parents do. Well, they used to, but I guess they rescinded that rule now that their baby girl gone and done it. My mom still takes pleasure in waking me up way too early and then complaining that we sleep too much, like we are teenagers. My dad? Same basic variation on that theme. Our refrain for most of the week was, "Just let us sleep!"

My Maw Maw was, as usual, awesome. She cooked all of her specialties for Alex and I think she was really excited to have someone new try her cooking. While we all appreciate her gumbo and calda and whatever else she comes up with, we've all had it before. But Alex is a fresh face with a completely different food past. He is a midwestener! He doesn't eat seafood! He doesn't eat rice with EVERY.SINGLE.MEAL! So he gladly ate everything presented to him and was wonderful and charming and funny the entire time. And so, she came to love him even more. It is the story of his life, people.

We also hung out with one of my awesome bridesmaids and her brother and some other friends. We headed down to the House of Blues one night and we took Alex on his very first night in the French Quarter. We did not see Brad and Angelina (except for on the news), but we did see dueling pianos. And strippers. (Though that part was not on purpose and the look on Alex's face when he turned and just THERE SHE WAS IN THE STREET was quite priceless.)

So overall our holidays were fantastic. We have yet to exchange presents with Alex's family because most of them took a much needed vacation to Florida for the holidays. While I was jealous of their many, many hours on the beach, I would never trade it for the many, many hours of rain below sea level. Plus, we got to wear just t-shirts during the day too! (And pants and shoes. I mean, we didn't just run around pants-less. While we would have fit in the Quarter like that, we did not.)

I had a few regrets from this trip . 1) I didn't get a Grenita from PJ's. 2) I didn't get a smoothie from Smoothie King. And 3) I didn't get a King Cake. But since all of my regrets are food related, I feel as though the trip as a whole was a success. I'd show you pictures, but I didn't take that many and they are somewhere that is not here under my cozy blanket. (High of 16 degrees today! And snow all day! Too cold to do anything productive!)

Also, just in case you think my parents don't love us, they were quite generous in the gift department. Not a sign of thinking we are adults, but a sign that they care for us deeply. (My mom is a super gift giver. It's completely and totally her way of saying "I love you."). We received three gifts cards in much larger amounts than expected (which is what we asked for...we are old and boring now and want to buy things like tile and a dishwasher), as well as a brand spanking new set of luggage. My parents also gave Alex an LSU antenna topper that he plans on leaving on the car of someone he hates.

Although, I will share that I think he is less of an LSU hater now that I took him to campus. He will definitely argue this, but I believe he found campus charming. He also got to ooh and ahh over Mike the Tiger. As he said, that is way cooler than having a nut in a cage.

So that was Christmas. I'd say it was a rousing success for our first (married) Christmas together. Plus, my mother and Alex's grandmother gave us ornaments commemorating the event and I am so excited to hang them up next year. I am looking forward to forging new traditions together in the years to come, but this year was a good "starter" year with my family. And Parsnip didn't tear up any linoleum. That in and of itself made the entire holiday season a success.