Living. and Loving.: Christmas with the Ostranders

This year we celebrated with Chris' side of the family on the Saturday before Christmas. As much as I loooove Christmas with my big family, I always look forward to this time as well because it's just Chris and I, his parents and his Aunt Barb, always being a little more intimate affair.

Me on the way there...you can notice in the background that we are seriously consumed in a real Winter Wonderland this year. Although the weather has not been quite as romantic as it sounds....

We packed up Niles with us since we planned on spending the whole evening there and drove out to Norton Shores sometime in the early afternoon. It was so fun because we ended up getting some amazing presents that were completely unexpected, and those are sometimes the best. This was one of them and we absolutely love it. We needed a Garmin and are so lucky that we got one...awesome surprise!

Jeanne and Bob with their new pan set.

Family pic by the fire place. Niles' eyes make him look evil haha!

After opening up presents we went out for dinner at one of our favorite restaurant there called The Hearthstone. Great food...yumm.. We are cute. :)

So after dinner Chris wanted to watch a movie with his Dad so I took a little nap for a while and then afterward we met up with his cousin Derek and his girlfriend Amber at Chilis. We have been wanting to meet her for a while. The plan was to drive home that night but the snow started to fall...that should have been our cue to leave but we wanted to spend time with his family and not rush our evening! Well by the time we were driving back to his parents to pick up Niles we realized there was just absolutely no way we were going to be able to make the 45 minute trek back to GR in the dark with the snow coming down the way it was....we ended up getting stuck there. It was fun though, we stopped at Meijer on the way back and I bought some sweat pants, which are now like my fav. thing to wear around the house...we pulled out the futon, scrounged up some toiletries and cuddled up watching the snow come down out the window. Sometimes those spur of the moment change of plans are the best. The next morning we slept in, had lunch, packed up and finally admitted that we needed to get going...we had no idea how long our drive would take.

Bindi and Niles...they only sat nice like that for about a second...

Jeanne and Bindi

And last but not least, here is a time lapse video of our hellish drive home. Gotta love living in the freezing cold tundra we know as MI...

Christmas Eve Chris's parents always host their family party at their house. Chris has not been able to go for a couple years now because he always has to work, so I end up going to represent. It's fun but not the same without him. We had so much food this year! Here are some shots from the night...

His little cousin Brian showing me some of his presents...