Ticket to Ride Nordic Countries

Christmas 2024

Advent went by so quickly, and here we are at Christmas already! Let’s take a look at this year’s celebration, starting with a Christmas lights walk Moose and I took Christmas Eve Eve…we think this should be our neighborhood’s official Christmas tree

Christmas Eve always starts with the Captain:

Chickadee finished our Lego Advent project, and Turkey and Moose played the first game of chess:

The Christmas Eve church service is my second favorite of the year…I think it’s interesting that my two favorite services both involve candlelight.

After church, we stopped by the city of St. Louis Christmas tree. It was rainy, which is unfortunate (so much for my dreams of a white Christmas), but at least that kept it from being too bright out, because it was still pretty early and should have been pretty light.

And then we drove through the Way of Lights.

When we got home, it was picture time. It’s the second year we’ve had LED lights on our Christmas tree, but I’m still not used to them…I can’t help but feel that they make the pictures look like they were taken in an aquarium!

Bunny came up with the idea for this year’s cake (carrot with a gingerbread mousse filling and cream cheese frosting), and we made it together…it was so delicious!

Of course I had to play Animal Crossing and check in with all my neighbors (especially Roald!).

We played a couple of games of Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries while watching our traditional Christmas Eve shows (the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker and Rick Steves’ European Christmas)…I was the winner of the game I played with 152 points, and completed every route in my hand (11 in total, I believe), plus used every train car and every card I had. I think that’s the Ticket to Ride equivalent of a complete game?

I filled the stockings, tracked Santa with NORAD (I made sure he got to both St. Louis and Chicago) and set up the nativity before bed.

Christmas Day always begins with our favorite coffee cake:

Since I wasn’t entirely happy with my very blue photos from Christmas Eve, I took some more pictures at church:

Christmas morning is such a beautiful service!

We got a very nice family photo afterwards:

After we got home and opened presents, I got to work on dinner. I decided to do things a little bit different this year. Instead of making a fancy dinner, which we all enjoy, but isn’t the highlight of the holiday for us, I focused all of my energy on the best meal of the year, the Pick Out Dinner. Since that was our main Christmas dinner, I set the table with the china, folded napkins like Christmas trees, and discovered that a Stammtisch sign I’ve been wanting for a while magically appeared on the table while I was working on the dinner.

Our dinner was our usual favorites, including an extended cheese board, jalapeño popper and Rotel dips, a shrimp ring, several kinds of sandwiches, mozzarella sticks, and buffalo Chex mix.

I love making salame roses!

It’s our favorite meal of the whole year!

After dinner, we watched White Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the Disney World Christmas parade. And then Ryan and I played Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries (using the new anniversary train cars we got for Christmas!), to determine who the house’s Ticket to Ride: Christmas champion is. Spoilers…not me! I scored almost 100 points less than I did in yesterday’s game (only 54!!!) and Ryan is the undisputed champion.

And so another Christmas has come and gone…but the 12 Days of Christmas is just beginning, and we still have some more fun planned! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Movie Traditions

I’ve realized this year that not only do I have a list of movies that I must watch every Christmas season, I also have traditions for when I need to watch some of them.

Every year, after we put up the Christmas tree, I have to watch White Christmas. It doesn’t matter if we put the tree up before Thanksgiving or after, but there’s something special about watching that movie while basking in the lights of the Christmas tree for the first time of the season. It really puts me in a great Christmas mood!

On Thanksgiving Day night, I almost always watch Holiday Inn. I almost missed it this year, because I was so tired from all of the work that it is Thanksgiving dinner, but I managed to stay awake until the end (more or less). This seems like the perfect movie to kick off the holidays, because not only does it have a lot of Christmas scenes/music, it also has a really good Thanksgiving scene.

When I’m wrapping Christmas presents, I always watch The Muppet Christmas Carol. Actually, I usually end up watching it twice by the time I’m done with all the gifts. I have no idea why that particular tradition started, but it wouldn’t seem like present night if I didn’t have it playing in the background. I especially like all of the songs!

On baking night, the movie of choice is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I usually need a little humor by the time I’m done baking dozens of cookies, and dipping various treats in chocolate. So, no matter how worn out I am by the task, I know that I’ll be laughing the whole time, even while realizing that I have more in common with Clark Griswold than any other character in the movie!

On Christmas Eve, after church, after we’ve had Jesus’s birthday cake, after the children are in bed and the presents are under the tree, Ryan and I always watch the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker while playing some version of Ticket to Ride (usually “Nordic Countries”). He’s really very nice to put up with watching it yet again, since I’ll have watched it many, many times by Christmas Eve, but it just needs to be seen at least one more time on that night.

One last Christmas movie tradition is the yearly viewing of Die Hard. This movie doesn’t need to be watched on a certain day–instead, the tradition is the annual discussion Ryan and I have about whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. He insists that it is; I say that explosions aren’t very Christmasy. But even that has become something I look forward to every year, so whether or not it’s a Christmas movie isn’t even important, it’s still one of our unique family traditions!

Another Christmas Tradition

Every year on Christmas Eve, after the children are in bed and the presents placed under the tree, Ryan and I play my favorite board game–Ticket to Ride: Christmas Edition. OK, it’s actually called Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries, but the game is so pretty and Christmas-y, with holly and snow on the board and cards, and what I’m guessing (based on the geography of the game) is Julinisse on the box cover. This is the only time of year we get out this version of Ticket to Ride, and I look forward to it just as I do everything else that has to do with Christmas!