Christmas and New Years Vacation (Part 1)

For the past two weeks, Tyler, and Lyla, and I had the chance to spend some great quality time with each of our families. My family came up for the first week of our vacation, all 24 hours of driving. All of my sisters and brothers (and Drew- Ab's fiance) were so excited to finally see their little niece for the very FIRST time.

We had so much fun together playing games, visiting, cooking and passing Lyla around. Mom got The Pioneer Woman Cooks cookbook and I finally got to look through it. We ended up making artichoke dip, chicken fried steak and a berry cobbler from the Pioneer Woman (all of which were delish). It's a great country-style cookbook with illustrated pictures for each step in the recipe (which I thought was pretty neat).

We had a decent amount of snow while my family was up, so one day everyone went skiing. Mom and I stayed home with the Little Lady. I love getting to spend time with my Momma. Everyone seemed to have a really good time.

Christmas Eve rolled around and so did our family tradition of tootsie rolls. For those who don't know, every Christmas Eve we all get "tootsie rolls" which are SOFT, christmas pj's wrapped up in a tootsie roll shaped package. For me, it's one of my favorite presents each year because I loooove soft pj's. So, as I was saying, little Lyla got her first Christmas pj's this year.

We had so much fun over Christmas!! Great Grandma Mary and Papa Joe were so gracious in letting us all stay in their NY house to spend Christmas together. I wish they could have been there too!!More to post later on our visit with Tyler's fam!!