Christmas Recap Part 1

On the Saturday before Christmas we decided that Eric's dad was improving enough for us to leave town for a few days to spend some time with my family for Christmas. Since Eric had a few things to wrap up Saturday afternoon, we decided to leave early Sunday morning which left us free to attend the 3rd Annual Tacky Christmas Sweater Party. It was an interesting evening of tacky sweaters, drinks, fun, and general craziness that ensues with our crowd.  But this party also had Santa Claus, two of them actually.  One was my husband and the other was his best friend.  They were channeling more of the Bad Santa character than the Santa most of us know.  Somewhere along the way we came to the decision that everyone who came into the party had to get their picture taken with the Santas.  They set up two chairs right by the door and made sure everyone took a picture with them.  It was hilarious and horrifying at the same time.

We're a motly crew.

I'd like to think that peoples' reactions to the Santas was indicative of their feelings toward Santa as children.  Some were happy to pose with them while others looked slightly terrified. 

We called it a night as soon as Dirty Santa ended because we were up and on the road bright and early the next morning to Memphis!

We had no choice but to take the truck because there's no way all of this stuff would have fit in my car!

 For the second time in 24 hours I got to don my homemade light up reindeer sweatshirt as we competed in the Ugly Sweater 5K. It was a blast!  I was just glad that despite the fact I had not run since daylight savings changed back in November I was able to run the entire race.  They weren't keeping track of places but Eric said they were calling them out to the early finishers.  He finished 28th and we started in the 3rd heat! He didn't have a tracking app going to time himself, but I finished in 29:51 and I know he beat me by at least 5 minutes. As soon as we finished, we headed over to claim our reward....free beer! I can't think of a better reward for running!

The fam jam ready to run!

Pretty typical =)

Enjoying our post-race reward!

The remainder of our trip consisted of Christmas, family time, games, and a trip downtown to see the Peabody Ducks and eat at Rendezvous...of course.

Clockwise from top left: The Peabody Ducks waddling to the elevator to go home for the night; The Rendezvous and the Peabody in downtown Memphis; Our "Christmas Morning" breakfast was Gibson's Donuts including their Maple Bacon donut; we played several games over the course of a few days inlcuding Mexican Train which is probably the only domino game I know how to play.

.....and we did all of this before Christmas Eve!

Why?  Because we were up and on the road again Christmas Eve morning for Rounds 2, 3 and 4 back in Alabama, but we'll save that for another day.