For Christmas we drove down to Palmdale so we could spend it with Danelle's family. Her mom is retiring this year and hopes to visit her grand kids for the next Christmases, so we wanted to make sure we could spend what may be the last Christmas in Palmdale. Also, it gave me the opportunity to meet her cousins and extended family. Plus Danelle was happy to see one of her best friends Amy, who also recently got engaged. On Christmas Eve, the tradition is to get together for a big meal, exchange gifts and play games; this year it was at her Nina's house.

Danelle's father started the evening with a heartfelt toast to us and our engagement. Nina got us champagne and a really nice engagement basket she put together. The entire family was very warm and welcoming me as part of the family, plus very curious to meet this Marcus guy. For dinner we had a tasty roast pork, tamales, mashed potatoes, yams and plenty of desserts.

After dinner, we played some family games. Danelle is often the one to organize the games, but this year being busy and coming down late, Sarah, a close family friend took on the reigns and did a great job with it. We played a Santa bingo game, which I won! :-) Plus a raucous dice game which involved fast rolling and stealing gifts, plus a white elephant game - more gift stealing.
For Christmas, we went to church in the morning and then spent a quiet relaxing day with her parents. We took our time and didn't get to opening gifts until after 4pm. As a kid, I think we wouldn't make it to 8am before opening gifts. :-)

The day after Christmas we went out to downtown Pasadena with her parents to pick-up / exchange a few gifts. In the evening her Nina, Nino and cousin Frank came over to play cards. We pass the deck around and the dealer gets to pick the game. One time when it came to me, I made up a game I called the "Wedding Game". The game was basically Baseball but instead of 3's and 9's wild, I made 7's and A's wild for our wedding date July 11. The first two cards I flipped over for myself, were 7 and Ace. Pretty funny, plus I won the hand which only seemed appropriate.

We drove home the next day. Thankfully we both had the next week off and it was spent mostly packing up Danelle's apartment and moving her into mine. For New Year's Eve we had a quiet evening at home, we were both pretty tired after moving. I cooked us a nice meal, which Danelle's said was her favorite to date. I made a butternut squash soup, risotto with roasted vegetables and a parmesan-dijon chicken. We enjoyed some champagne and danced to Louis Armstrong as we toasted in the New Year!
Here are a few other pics from the holidays...