No Place Like Homes for the Holidays: Part 3

Well as I said before, this next post is out of order, but what holiday series would be complete without covering Christmas itself??

A week into my vacation, Eric came home early from work and we left for his parent's house. This was just one of the first family stops to celebrate Christmas. I love visiting the whole family, including their part beagle, part coyote: Chika.

I'm not kidding! There isn't much concrete evidence, but all things considered, coy-dog is the best guess  so far. For instance, this is what you get when you google beagle/coyote mix:

and this is what you get when you take a picture of Chika in the backyard:

looks pretty convincing to me...

As we were visiting before Christmas itself, we had some catching up to do in terms of shopping for family and friends. Luckily, there is a beautiful local mall right in town! Unluckily however, we were there the week before Christmas, and it was impossible to find a place to park.

I have never seen so many cars in a single system of parking lots in my life. Car after car, bumper to bumper, there was not a single place to be found. It looked like the entire town and all of its surrounding communities had waited until the last second to tackle Christmas shopping lists. After about 15 minutes of looking for a nonexistent spot, the humor that we approached the parking task with was on the verge of turning to aggravated frustration. And then, turning around the corner of Nordstrom, we saw it. A silver Nissan turned its back lights on, and began very cautiously backing out of its spot merely two rows from the front doors of my favorite department store.

"GET IT!!"...the exclamation wasn't necessary, but appropriate in the context of the rising adrenaline as we noticed another car eying the spot. After a couple of quick and masterful maneuvers, my very talented better half scored one of the best parking spots known to man (given the time of year).

Look how close we were!

Many gifts were purchased...including a little something for myself ;)

Normally this close to the holidays I never buy anything for personal use, in case it was someone's gift idea. However, Yankee Candle was having a sale! And in my opinion, one can never have too many study candles...

and speaking of gifts, I was given this gorgeous hanging jewelry box for Christmas, too...a truly original designer piece inspired by pintrest, made especially for me. It goes very nicely with the rest of the decor in my room once I was able to hang it (which actually took quite a bit longer than expected thanks to my complete lack of handy-skills). Nevertheless, there it is!

Visiting was lots of fun, but it wasn't long before we were off to celebrate with my extended family as well. Here we are at my family's Christmas celebration with Caroline and her boyfriend John!

When Christmas day finally came, Caroline and I were up north, celebrating with family and enjoying all that Santa brought for us

some highlights included books of pictures

African elephants

and lots
and lots

of socks....

I was excited to have given successful gifts as well. Christmas is my favorite holiday, and even though mine was packed full of long multi-state traversing drives, it was totally worth it!

But now I'm back in Illinois, gearing up before another action-packed semester...stay tuned...