Christmas recap

So we haven't even gotten to Thanksgiving yet, so this was going to be a "holiday recap" and include thanksgiving, but see, some of the pictures are missing (between a camera, two iphones, and two users on the same computer, we oftentimes get confused...) so i'm just making it easy on myself so that you all get a post already, and constraining it just to christmas. but trust me, thanksgiving will be coming soon.

it probably goes without saying, but christmas was fantastic. hurried and crazy and all, but fantastic.

one of the first events was a "formal" dinner with a small group of high schoolers we have over every wednesday night for a bible study.

here they are, in picture one with daniel looking incredibly awkward and i love it:



and in picture two with myself



...interesting how braden (on the right) never stopped closing his mouth. weird.

but the main event for christmas before returning to georgia was the annual monroe family christmas.

for three years now, daniel and i have had our christmas day before we return home. even though it's not in georgia, it has still become one of our favorite things about christmas.



we treat it exactly like we would any christmas day. we creep downstairs in to find that santa has come, quickly fill each other's stockings, take pictures of nickel and ourselves in front of the tree and then start opening gifts!





...we're really ridiculous.



...and here we are in our christmas eve onesies. like i said. ridiculous.

we gave nickel a bone to open, just like we did last year, but honestly it's not worth showing. apparently she's getting old and boring, because she kind of tried to open it, then just looked up at us.



after we open gifts, we make an incredible breakfast, complete with mimosas and this year homemade mochas (thanks to a stove-top espresso maker that was a gift to me!)



we spend the rest of the day like most people spend christmas day, sitting around lazily playing with our gifts :) it's amazing. around 5 we dropped nickel off at the boarding place and then started packing!

being home was fabulous. we hadn't been to georgia in a year, and so it was crazy seeing all the ga license plates, hearing all the accents, and such...plus, of course, seeing SO MANY people. going to Daniel's childhood church is always wonderful, just spending time with our parents, being with extended family, and seeing a few precious friends. sadly, it's always a bit bittersweet because we know it's soon to come to an end, but regardless, we treasure that time SO MUCH.

and this christmas we stole a day to go to athens, where we went to college and met and thus share SO MANY memories. best we can figure we hadn't been there in at least two years...

we had two meals there and if you know athens at all you know that that means we had a really hard time deciding where to eat.

there's last resort grill (yummmm),


farm (of course, ugh),


5 star day,

clocked,


and doc cheys,


just to name a few. but honestly, those last two don't even make the list. even though they're SO GOOD.

we ended up lunching at the grit







a smelt. gosh.

had cheese dip at mexicalli (best white cheese dip in the world...the one on the west side is closed!!!!),





and ate dinner at taco stand (can you tell the last two were daniel's choices. and the first one—the vegetarian hippie restaurant—was mine?)







and we spent the day walking around downtown, shopping and seeing north campus and the new student center (huge and amazing).

















(the burned georgia theatre :( and the 40 watt...)

and we took a picture in front of the building where we first met :)



and that night we were some of the few people at the georgia basketball game. one of daniel's favorite things ever.






and my favorite thing about athens christmas— the lights in the trees



(although, portland does this, too :) )

the only pictures we took of actual Christmas were at grandmother monroes—where, probably because of all the small children, cameras and videocameras are the norm.







but even though we only have pictures from that "event," all of christmas was so amazing, and while we missed our house and were glad to be coming home, it's always so hard to leave.

we flew all day on the 29th, leaving that morning, two layovers both with delays, and getting into portland at 12:30 at night. but we came into a snowy portland! apparently, snow completely surprised everyone, including the weathermen who didn't see it coming at all. about 3-4 inches, and it was beautiful! unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of our house in it's first snow :(

and we took a video of nickel coming home just like we did last year, expecting great entertainment, but like i said earlier, she's getting old and boring, and barely noticed us when we came to pick her up. once she got home, she just passed out, exhausted. i suppose she had a good christmas, too.

the last sixteen days

well, it's been a while. honestly, we're falling apart here a bit: since we returned to oregon on the 28th nickel's chewed apart like 2 pieces of clothing, we've broken like 3 things, we locked ourselves out of our apartment to the tune of a dollar amount i don't want to even talk about, and nickel has gone to the bathroom inside twice—something she hasn't done is about 3 years...yeah. but to back up to better times, christmas was great. really, really great. so here goes:

we made sure to frequent some essential restaurants:


for all our oregonian readers, this is zaxby's, and trust me. you're missing out. it's all in the sauce here — yummy chicken, crinkle fries, texas toast (daniel always lets me eat his)...but the sauce. and no lie: you put a tarnished penny in that sauce for like 2 minutes, take it out and rub it off and the penny shines. weird. and who knows what it does to your stomach. but it's good. plus, zaxby's originated in our school-town of athens. all the better.


and look! overcast skies! just like here...


quite possibly the greatest restaurant in the world...do i even have to tell you? awesome sweet tea, healthy and amazing chicken, waffle fries, and so much more. really, really good. oh we miss you chick-fil-a.


and this wasn't a must-go at all, but we did go into a johnny rocket's all the way across from oregon and you know what we found? can you see it?? it says tillamook cheddar cheese right there next to rocket single. woah.

but anyway, christmas is way more than food. we had amazing times with both of our families, saw not nearly as many friends as we would have liked to see, but a couple of really important ones, and opened a lot of presents.

so just to show you oregonians what we're talking about when we talk about christmas craziness, this is just a taste:

i don't know if you can tell just how many presents and people and stuff there is there, but it's a lot.

and then daniel told our cousin amanda last year that he would put his video of her opening her gift on you tube. well he never did, but he promised her this year too and so here's what we got amanda! love you amanda! you look great :)

but alas, we eventually returned to our new home and immediately picked up our dog who obviously missed us tons...this is what she did for like the first 45 minutes of being home:

and once that was over, just lots of this:

i know. lots and lots of videos. aren't you excited??

so, in the midst of several small disasters and frustrations, we went snowboarding yesterday, for my first time ever and daniel's second. it was pretty amazing — i fell like 200 times. but the good news is that daniel's practically a pro by now (at least on the green run that we took like 20 times.)


it was snowing super hard and i think daniel's showing us that his fingers are going numb (don't worry — he had gloves, he had just taken them off for the camera.) we went up the ski lift at one point and by the time we got to the top we had like an inch of snow all over us...


and can you see this? my leg is completely immersed in the snow. apparently the base of the mountain had 80" of snow on the ground. over 6 feet. wow.


and can you tell what this is? a car. completely, completely covered in snow. just the antenna there. sooo crazy.

and speaking of snow, portland got like 19 inches of snow while we were gone. apparently record-breaking, the "arctic blast" resulted in the national guard being called in. so that's pretty crazy. we'll just pretend like we were here.

that's it! merry christmas and happy new year!!!

Our Portland Christmas!

Well it is a Monroe family tradition (2 years running) to celebrate our family Christmas on the last day before we leave to go home for the holidays. This year that day was today (Wedensday), but we got an early start by going to see A Christmas Carol last night on our Christmas Eve! It was a great play, we both really enjoyed it, and it was a fun way to spend our night before Christmas.

Then we came home, huddled under our electric blanket(it is freezing here), and waited for Santa!

So this morning we got up, made a Christmas breakfast, and got started with the day! We all opened some great stuff, including Nickel. Watch... and either turn the sound off or get ready for our awkward running commentary...

So we had a great day of laying around, finishing our Christmas cards, opening presents, reading The Christmas Story, and watching A Christmas Story! What more can you ask for! It was a fantastic family Christmas.

So we're all packed up and ready for Georgia where the weather will surely be better that here...

We get in town Thursday night so all you ATLiens give us a call. We're excited to see you all!

christmas listening

i (kirsten) get asked multiple times every day what my favorite christmas album is (yeah, that's a joke. and if i don't say that now i might get some strange phone calls. joke.) but if i did, i would say, everytime, hands down, this album:sufjan stevens, songs for christmas. it may not be entirely fair to call this my favorite christmas album when in fact it is five albums in a box set, but i'm not too picky.

now don't get me wrong, james taylor's voice on his cd last year is amazing, and i love the charlie brown christmas cd. and of course there are individual songs, including classics and versions from movies that are so, so good. but for every season that i've owned this (which is a mere two, but still), it's been the only christmas cd(s) that i can play continuously on repeat without getting annoyed. and that says a lot — christmas songs can get old. it's so very good. there are newly written crazy and fun songs, serious songs, genious takes on familiar songs, and an incredible version of come thou fount, which i'm aware isn't a christmas song, but still.

if you do take my sound advice and decide to invest in this box set, you have to hear this: do not buy it from itunes. there's nothing wrong with itunes and everything is certainly cheaper there, but the hard copy of the cd contains a wealth of greatness, including stickers, handdrawn illustrations, stories, and all sorts of other things from sufjan himself (that's right, sufjan stevens is a name.) and you'll be able to see firsthand how smart (or weird if you choose to look at it that way) this guy is. it's amazing. so there's my christmas recommendation.