Christmas Day

I hope everyone had a terrific Christmas! I had a great day. 

I love my Christmas cats! I’ll start with Christmas Eve. I went for a 3 mile run in the morning before heading out to Benihana’s with my family for lunch. This is a Christmas Eve tradition that we do every year. It’s such a fun experience, and the chefs are so amazing.

I wasn’t super hungry due to several big days of eating before Christmas Eve, so I decided to just have a salad and of course their signature fried rice!

A lot of times of Christmas Eve we go to a movie after this, and then at night go for a drive to see Christmas lights, but this year we decided to mix it up. We didn’t feel exactly in the Christmas spirit yet partly because things were so different ( I wasn’t home until about a week before Christmas), so we decided to take Bart up to the city to see the giant Christmas tree and walk around the giant mall there.

And ok, we may have ulterior motives…kittens in the window of Macy’s! One of them looked and acted exactly like one of my cats, Mary!

It’s so sad that so many kittens up for adoption are black. I don’t understand why. I love black cats! My family has had black cats for as long as I can remember. They do tend to have a little extra attitude, but that only makes them all the more lovable. 

Once inside the mall, we walked around and soaked in the Christmas cheer. I was really excited because I got one of those 20 minute massages from a kiosk in the mall. It was fabulous. My right shoulder is way tighter than my left. I’m not sure if this is a result of always being on the same side of the boat while rowing, or leftover issues from being a softball pitcher for so long. (For the record, I never had any shoulder injuries but my shoulder was rotated slightly forward because pitching built up the muscles so much on the front of my shoulder.)

On our way back out, we stopped at a cream puff place where we split an eggnog cream puff and a peppermint chocolate cream puff. SO GOOD. 

Back at home, I prepared breakfast for Christmas morning: French Toast Souffle. 

I used cinnamon bread which we picked up from Whole Foods. This cinnamon bread is amazing, especially with a little butter and cinnamon sugar, so I thought it would work perfectly in place of challah.

On Christmas morning, all I had to do was stick it in the oven. So easy!

Ate alongside Harry and David pears.

With syrup of course! (not pictured)

After stockings and breakfast, we headed out to eat dinner with my grandparents at their favorite restaurant, and returned home to open presents and enjoy a quiet night in front of the TV with kitties. It was a nice day.

What holiday traditions do you have?