Christmas Part 3 (Long)

We got up early Saturday morning (Christmas Eve) and headed to Wisconsin. It was a very nice, albeit fast. There was surprisingly very little traffic and we made great timing. When we got there we met up with the family (MIL, FIL, SIL, BIL) and had lunch at Kopp's. I was not very impressed. Eric was excited b/c he hadn't eaten there in 20 years. It was basically fast food and they had benches (and 6 round tables for 2) to eat on. Anyway after lunch we headed downtown to the Miller Brewery. SIL had called and they said it would be open until 3:30. Unfortunately they must have been having a slow day and decided to close early so we didn't get to partake in the tour of Miller. After that we headed to The Domes to walk around. That was a lot of fun. See for yourself...








After the domes it was still early afternoon, so we looked for something else to do. We decided to tour the Pabst Mansion. That was super neat, too. We walked around there for quite a while. Sorry no pics though. When we left there we decided to head back to SIL/BIL's house. We visited and sat around the house for a while, then decided to open a gift each. The tree was stuffed so instead of digging through we decided to open ours. I opened my new snow boots, Eric opened his light sabor (or his life savor as I like to call it). We got MIL a case of Asti, FIL a nice bottle of scotch and 2 crystal scotch glasses, SIL a weather station and BIL a coffee maker.








After that we headed out to find dinner. We ended up eating at Texas*Roadhouse, which was so so. After dinner we went back tot he house to visit for a while longer, watched a movie, ate some cake for Eric's birthday, then headed back to the hotel where we were staying.

Christmas morning we woke up and leisurely got ready and headed over to SIL/BIL's w/ a quick stop at Star*buck's for some morning java. My inlaws came up with this numbering system on all the gifts instead of putting names on them. It proved to be quite interesting. We spent the morning unwrapping gifts and snacking...











SIL worked diligently over our afternoon feast. She prepared turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, dressing, gravy, broccoli/cauliflower salad, rolls. It was yummy! She even set out cute little place cards for each of us.




After dinner we relaxed and played some serious Uno. We had a record hand, which was nearly an hour and a half long. ONE HAND! SIL ended up winning the game. We spent the evening just snacking and enjoying each others company. We also watched "Must Love Dogs", which was a cute show. Finally we loaded everything in the tahoe and headed back to the hotel.

We got up very early Monday morning and headed home. The weather was nice and again the traffic was sparse. We did make a little stop at gurnee mills, but the mall wasn't actually opened yet (just a couple of the big stores), so we got back on the road quickly. We nearly stopped here, too. ha ha ha



We made it home before noon. We spent the afternoon unpacking, doing laundry and trying to relax.

It was a great Christmas!

View all of the pics here! Yes, we like to take lots of pics and these are only the ones from our camera... We still have more to come...