Monday, December 27, 2010

Christmas 2010

I hope everyone had a great holiday!  We missed seeing so many of you and it was a weird adjustment for me to be away for the holiday.  Matt has missed several Christmas' with family due to work, travel, etc. but in all my 30 years I have never missed a Christmas at my mom's house.  I suppose the times they are a changin' and I'm not sure how I feel about it.  Putting on Christmas yourself is hardwork!  I'm still exhausted!

Anyway, we have been festive little bee's this holiday season and we still have more yuletide cheer to spread this week too!  We kicked off our holiday weekend with a visit to the Nutcracker at the Sofia Opera House.  The place is beautiful...and tickets are so cheap!  I was worried that I might be bored or that the ballet may not be my cup of tea but I absolutely LOVED it!  Matt struggled to stay awake during the first half but fought through like a trooper.  I'll definitely go back to see more shows here...now I wonder if I would like even more ballets.  Below is a picture of us at intermission having a little champagne.

Of course, I can't go anywhere without something comical happening.  So during intermission we finally got our champagne just in time for intermission to almost be over.  So I had to "chug" mine.  Heaven forbid I waste a $1.50 glass of champagne-right?  So as we were walking back towards the door to the theatre I burped so loud from my chugging session.  It echoed off the walls of the intermission area.  Awesome.  Then I decided I better run the the restroom quickly with one of the girls we were attending the performance with.  Well, we got locked out of the show!  I guess at these types of places the doors literally lock from the outside.  The people would not let us back in, thankfully the girl I was with is Bulgarian and was fussing with the folks to let us back in.  The poor guys were watching the ballet alone.  All I could picture was us being stuck in the hallway outside of the ballet and the guys having to watch the whole second half alone.  Finally my Bulgarian friend convinced the staff to let us back in.  Of course it was mid performance and we had to step over a ton of people to get to our center row seats.  So embarrassing! Below are some shots of downtown that night.  It was a warm, foggy evening.  Kinda cool.  We were able to see some of the decorations all lit up.






Onto Christmas Eve.  So for Christmas Eve we decided we would throw a party.  I did no prep work before hand because I had had a rather busy week so on Friday morning we had to do all of the cooking and cleaning for the party that night.  We worked hard all day!  Below is a picture of me before all of the guests arrived.  I was so worried noone would show!  Instead, we had a great showing and ended up staying up till almost 4am...4AM on Christmas Eve!  Crazy.



A picture of our Christmas Tree.  Our family totally spoiled us!  None of my presents for Matt arrived in time for Christmas so we are spreading Christmas out for a while until all of his things arrive!  My friends 11 year old walked into our house and said "Wow, you guys have way more things under the tree than we do!"  Awesome-huh?

A picture of some of the food...of course half devoured by the time a remembered to take a picture.

We figured that everyone would head home early since it was Christmas Eve.  Then as the night went on people started saying things like "well, I have to stay until midnight so we can cheers christmas"  like it was new years eve!




And then, this crazy storm came through.  It was almost like a summer thunderstorm.  It was pouring down rain and the wind was blowing like crazy.  Our power even went out for a bit.  So some of the party goers decided to stick around and wait out the storm.  So what do you do on Christmas Eve in the middle of a thunderstorm?  Take tequilla shots, of course.





After I night like that, this is what you look like when you wake up on Christmas morning.  We were so struggling!

Christmas Day was weird.  It was 60 degrees and bright and sunny.  The crazy storm the night before cleared away all of the smog and it was the warm super clear day.  Kinda cool, except I really wanted a white christmas plus we were too tired to enjoy the weather.  Below is a picture of one of Matt's gifts to me.  An apron and a meat tenderizer.  Sweet, think he's trying to send me a message?  ;)
 Matt opening a picture of one of the gifts I bought for him...

Some of our friends had us over for christmas dinner, they slightly delayed dinner time given our shennaningans the prior evening but we had a delicious meal and realxed at their house an watched movies all evening.  It was fun. Yesterday we headed to a St. Stephen's Day party and had more delish food with great company.  But, as you can see I put the camera to rest after Christmas morning.

Tonight we are having Christmas Part II as some more things arrived in the mail for Matt today.  They are wrapped and under the tree waiting for him to get home.  Given that today is an extension of Christmas I can say I finally got a white Christmas.  After 60 degrees on Christmas Day, it's snowing here today.  I'm loving it!  Everything looks so pretty covered in snow.

Some left over party beverages on the balcony today and the view from our balcony today.


We have another busy week ahead of us.  Christmas Part II tonight, dinner with friends tomorrow, and then we are headed out of town!  I'm so excited to finally be going somewhere!  In Bulgaria there are lots of spa hotels because of a plethora of thermal/mineral springs.  So we are headed to one of them for 2 nights.  Matt is, as expected, thrilled at the thought of 2 nights at a spa.  hahaha.  We head back New Years Eve with no real plans...I'm sure something will pan out between now and then.

Hope you guys enjoy the week!

1 comment:

  1. Just catching up and I so love this post!! Haha! the 4am thing would kill me too. Well, actually it did. We didn't get home until 4am on NYE and I just can't do that anymore. I always feel gross and tired and did nothing but watch a marathon of the BH Housewives. BTW - your place looks cute and don't you love entertaining and using all your plates and dishes! Cheers to 2011~

    ReplyDelete