Christmas in the Mitten

Ahhh, life has been crazy busy lately! We were able to scoot on over to Michigan for a few days for Christmas though. We left early morning Christmas Eve. After a little layover in Houston (which was much warmer than Seattle or Detroit) we made it back to Michigan just in time to go straight to party number one at Uncle Rick's house! As always, a great time. I wish we had made it a little earlier so we could have cought some of the other family member who came early and left early. Instead we got to party into the night with all the late night crazies. We made it back to the parents house in the wee hours of the morning just in time to catch a few hours of sleep before the next party on Christmas Day! Thankfully no one was motivated enough to get up extra early to open presents.

Around noon the Dougherty Family all came over for a little Christmas Festivities. We enjoyed the traditional alaskan king crab and pizza lunch along with mimosas and some chit chats and white elephant gifting.

Later that evening when it was back to just our immediate family (which is turning out to be A LOT of people when they're all there at one time in one house!) we did our own gift exchange and stockings opening. All the gifts were awesome, but really the best part was all being their together at one time...which is getting increasingly rare! Good thing we have several wedding coming up for good excuses to get together some more!

Sunday we all headed into church. I hadn't been to the new church building that was built recently, so that was fun to see. Being the day after Christmas it was kind of a small crowd, but it was nice to see a few people I knew that I hadn't seen in a while. After a quick brunch it was time to get ready for party number 3! This time it was the extended Raetz family...which included a bunch of little kids running around! It was my first time to meet a couple of them...super cute!

As is tradition, was made sure to get our Christmas family pictures including some of the whole group. Our group keeps growing every year, and we're still missing some people! Maybe someday we'll actually have the whole family all together. It's awesome to see all the generations though!

Monday we finally got to sleep in and relax for a little bit. Then we got to start doing a few wedding related things! That afternoon we met with Pastor Thompson to go over a mairraige survey he had had us take a while back...looks like we can get married :) We also went over a lot of details for our wedding ceremony and all that good stuff. So many details to figure out and decide upon still! After a couple hours of that, we headed out to another little party. This time it was a going away party for little brother as we're stealing him about to the West Coast now! We also met up with Nick and took him with us to Mr. B's for some food and beverages.

Tuesday we had a few more wedding things to do! We started out with another meeting with the Theatre to try to finalize a few details and go over what else needs to be figured out in the next few weeks. The list is getting smaller and smaller each time we meet! After that we headed to a few stores to find a new suit for dad and a cute little dress for mom! We ended up getting two options for mom...now she just has to decide which one to wear for the wedding! I think she should keep both though...that's one hot momma!

In our down time we did quite a bit of Dexter watching and got mostly caught up on the last season. I am quite convinced I may have to get Showtime in the fall just so I can watch this show...it is addicting! Although the show itself if awesome, I just had to add this little clip from the show that kept me laughing for quite a while. The internet clip is funny, but I think in the context of the show it's extra hillarious :)

Wednesday morning Ryan and I were headed back to Seattle, and Jordan and Kristen were headed out to San Francisco, so we all drove up to the airport bright and early leaving mom and dad with an empty house once again. Now they just need to come visit all of us west coasters!