O'Connor Christmas Vacation, Part 1

Greetings from the North Woods! Joe and I are up in Minnesota for Christmas and currently at my parents lake house in Northern Minnesota. In my opinion it is the most relaxing place on earth.



The backyard

 Our vacation started out with a nice dinner at Gram and Dun on the plaza in Kansas City with some good friends, followed by a frantic phone call from my mother letting us know that we were sure to get caught in a blizzard on our drive up to Minnesota the next day. I looked up the weather and sure enough there was supposed to be a blizzard in Iowa and Minnesota, but it seemed like we would miss it by a few hours. Just to be sure though, I texted my meteorologist friend, Kristin, to see when the blizzard would hit. She reassured me that we would miss the storm in Iowa, and that there really wasn't going to be much snow up in Minnesota. While I was relieved, I was also slightly disappointed that I wouldn't be able to take "Joe's first Minnesota Blizzard" pictures once we reached our destination.

We spent our first night at my friend, Marissa, and her fiance, Jason's, house. Jason made us all a yummy lasagna. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, there were no pictures taken that night for me to share, but I can assure you it was a fun night.

We headed up north with my sister, my brother in law, Mike, and their little twins the next day. The snow isn't too bad up north yet, just enough to cover all the trees.

As I've  mentioned previously my sister likes to buy her pork by the pig. She once mentioned to my dad that her pig is the best bacon, and my dad disagreed, saying this bacon he got in Rochester, Minnesota was the best. Since my family loves a competition, they (or really, my dad) decided to have a "bacon off". Seriously. My sister cooked the bacon Friday morning, and we all had a blind taste test to determine the winner.

In the end it was determined that my sister's pig made the best bacon. I guess buying your pork by the pig is actually a good idea.

As I've also previously mentioned every year for our "small family Christmas" we order Chinese from our favorite Chinese restaurant, the Great Wall, for our Christmas dinner. When we have small family Christmas up north, we get it as takeout before we head up, and reheat it for Christmas dinner. This year, since the girls go to bed around 7, we decided to make Chinese Christmas dinner Chinese Christmas lunch so that the girls can participate in the rest of the night.

While we were eating the girls hung out in their new bouncers.



After dinner is when we always open presents.

Can you guess who got the most?

We spent the rest of the night watching Christmas movies and relaxing. Today we are going bowling, going to a movie, and having Chicken Wildrice Soup for Dinner. This is my favorite time of year!

Tomorrow we are heading back down to the cities and getting ready for our big family Christmas at my parents house down there. I'll leave you with some more pictures from this weekend.



A very Minnesotan gift



Merry Christmas!