Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Merry Christmas

I know its a little late but I wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

This year Hubs and I both got Christmas eve and Christmas Day off work (a first while being together) so we decided to go visit his family up island. The plan was simple, we would leave after I got off work, to catch the 3pm ferry. Well, everything was working out well until we got to the ferry (1 hr and a bit drive later) to find out it was cancelled. We then turned around and drove down to catch the other ferry to take the long route around. In the end instead of the 1 hr drive and a 40 min ferry we ended up driving 2 and a bit hours, a 1.5 hr ferry, a 40min ferry, an hour and 15min drive then another ferry before we finally got there. All in all it was a 12 hr adventure trying to get to the in-laws place but it was totally worth it. Oh and did I mention we did all this in a horrible rainstorm with a crazy amount of wind.

We got in around 12am on the 24th, unpacked and went to bed. When we woke up in the morning we had a quick breakfast and went to see the in-laws new campsite. It had an amazing view of the water. After that we went to visit Hubb's grandparents. His grandmother is in the hospital due to a degenerative spine and an infected bed sore on her back but she is healing and starting to have visits home.  It was so great to see them and spend time with them at Christmas. We also got to see his Aunt, a bunch of uncles and their wives and a few other friends of the family.

At 3pm Hubbs and a couple of his uncle's went to go light the Star. The Star is a family tradition that his family has been doing for almost 30 years. It starts by everyone getting together on Christmas eve, and those who are able, climb up this mountain overlooking the town and place this star with lights up and keep it lit for the next week. It's quite amazing to be able to see thos star from below and was even visible on the ferry ride home.

After putting up the Star and visiting that side of the family, we had to head back and get ready for Christmas dinner. Hubb's step-family are Danish and have Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve. We headed over to his step-grandmother's house for an evening of good food and fun. There were 13 of us having dinner (thats with 8 others unable to make it due to the weather) and boy was it delicious. There was the traditional dinner but with extras added such as red cabbage and rice pudding for dessert. A neat tradition with the rice pudding is that an almond is mixed into the pudding and its dished out to everyone. As everyone eats they look for the almond and whoever finds it gets chocolates. This year no one found the almond (however there was a lot of pudding left). A little later in the evening we took part in another Danish tradition of dancing around the christmas tree while singing Christmas songs and a few Danish songs. Afterwords Christmas gifts were handed out and opened.

On Christmas morning, we woke up and opened a few more Christmas presents with Hubb's family. Then we had a quick bite to eat before getting ready for the Smorge. The Smorge is another Danish tradition which I absolutely love. Everyone gets together and instead of having a huge turkey dinner, its basically a buffet of pickled herring/salmon, buns, brown bread, crackers, various sliced meats/cheeses, treats, pickles/olives, etc. Then the family sits around a big table and for a few hours just shares stories and talk while eating and taking Snapps shots.

We had to leave the party a little early as we had to catch the ferry home :( We hated to leave but had such a great time with family. Once we got home we opened the last of the cards we had gotten, unpacked and got ready for bed as we both worked early the next morning.

Boxing day morning we both worked but after work we went to see Hubbs dad and stepmom. We had some wine, my favorite was the ginger beer that tasted more like a ginger champagne (which they are making) and homemade tarts.

Christmas came and went pretty fast this year, but we were able to visit with family and celebrate Christmas together. Hopefully everyone else had an enjoyable Christmas.

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