This year Garrett and Crystal hosted my mom's side of the family for Christmas.
​With weeks of preparation, they hosted 50 people for a full dinner and party!

Great job to all the cooks! The food was fantastic, and plentiful... most were sent home with a second plate.

With 50 people, it's tough to get a photo of everyone.
​A few of us ran around with the camera, trying to capture what we could.

Many wore their ugly Christmas sweaters, along with hats, antlers, bracelets, and more.

Great job Garrett and Crystal, thank you for hosting! 
It was a lovely Christmas - definitely one we won't forget :)

Every year we spend the 24th with my Danish side of the family. We celebrate Christmas with various Danish Traditions!

A traditional dinner of roast pork, gravy, red cabbage, and sugar potatoes. Dessert follows with rice pudding. An almond is hidden among the pudding, and the one who finds it must hide it until the end, where they win a prize. My losing streak has been pretty strong for the past few years...

After dinner we dance around the tree to Danish christmas carols.

And our newest, non-Danish, tradition is a Chinese Auction. We have a lot of fun opening gifts, stealing items, and plotting! I hope everyone had a wonderful Chrismtas Eve! 

Every year we bake (well my dad bakes) Christmas cookies, and decorate them. Here's this years batch:

As always, there were some interesting designs... 
Lets face it, it's pretty hard to go wrong with sugar cookies and icing.

Getting in that Christmas Spirit!
1 & 2. Some gift wrapping and a Christmas inspired smoothie bowl.
​3 & 4. My first early present, a beautiful copper mug!

I know I mention hygge a lot, came across this article for anyone who's curious...
It's called The Year of Hygge, The Danish Obsession with Getting Cozy!
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-year-of-hygge-the-danish-obsession-with-getting-cozy?mbid=social_facebook

Every year we head into the woods to chop down our Christmas tree. We have family friends with a large lot
​that they let us use. This year we were lucky enough to have a ton of fresh fluffy snow to adventure in. 

Ruckus loved the snow, and jumping on everyone... I don't know how we managed to get him to stand still for a photo.

The crew with our trees! We had so much fun!
I do have a few more photos on my phone I'll be sharing soon ... :)

The sun sets early, and the air is freezing cold, so recently we've been retreating inside for hygge evenings.
These evenings generally include scrabble, candles, Christmas Tree lights, and when we're lucky, Ruckus!
We discovered the bag of Scrabble tiles closely resembles Ruckus' bag of treats, so we need to be careful with those... 

Stay warm, friends! 

This past week I made it out to 2 movies! I don't go to the movies often but somehow managed 2 in one week. ​

Girl On The Train: About a girl riding a train who sees something she shouldn't have seen, and decides to get herself involved. I read the book, so was hesitent about what to expect from the movie. I enjoyed the movie but of course enjoyed the book more. If you're looking for a movie with a similar feel to Gone Girl, definitely check out Girl On The Train.

Arrival: About aliens landing on Earth. I do enjoy an alien movie here and there but, nothing too extravagent with weird looking creatures, and concepts too wild to grasp. I found this movie to be a good level between reality and fantasy. A few moments I rolled my eyes but, for the most part I really enjoyed it. It's long but moved at a good pace, a few laughs here and there, and a good cast. I would recommend this one too!

Matt and I decided to take an afternoon at the Museum of Nature. 

My favourite exhibit, as always, is the Dinosaur exhibit!
​They also had a reptile and insect exhibit which I pretty much squirmed the entire way through...

Museum of Nature is probably one of my favourite museums in Ottawa!