Another Christmas come and gone

This year we got to spend about a week with Derrick's family at Christmas. We had the big meal on Christmas eve since we wanted to catch the Christmas eve service in Wilmington that night. The spread was very impressive! Derrick and I had a gift certificate to the Honey Baked Ham so gave it to his family to use for Christmas. It took about an hour of discussion to convince his Grandpa (who usually does all the cooking) that they did NOT need to be cooked. In the end everything turned out delicious.
After we ate I volunteered to take a family picture with my new tripod! I think it came out really well. In the back l -> r, Derrick's grandpa, Derrick, Derrick's mom, dad, brother, uncle and aunt. The cousins, grandma and I are in the front.

Christmas in Wilmington was much more low key. We were supposed to have a big dinner with my cousins and everybody who we haven't seen in several years, but my uncle got a crazy case of food poisoning that had him the hospital for about a week over Christmas. Then we were going to have a smaller meal but my mom got a skin infection on her face (what are the odds?!). So that left us with lots of spare time to go to the beach (and no family photos unfortunately- I actually took some but my mom made me swear not to post them on the internet :) )

It went by way too fast and now it is back to reality. sigh.