Merry Christmas, In Pictures

First we flew with Crowley (for essentially the first time*) on AirTran to Detroit.  What a difference between Southwest and AirTran, it’s hard to believe they’ll be co-operating soon.  I think we need a new designation for airlines:  “Low fare, high cost”.  We drove to Lansing and then to Munster the following morning to be with Aimee’s family.  The full complement of pictures is available here:  Christmas 2010 Photo Album.

Once in Munster, we opened gifts with Aimee’s parents and had lots of time to kick back and catch up a bit.

That evening, they graciously hosted the extended family for dinner and dessert so that we would get a chance to visit with everyone.  Megan drove in for a visit and a lovely lunch at Jalapenos: “The Hottest Mexican Restaurant in Schererville”.

  

 

We ventured back to Lansing in time for the traditional trip to Roma Bakery and Deli.  We were there for about 2 hours as we ordered some of their finest imported meats, cheeses, and homemade desserts:  salami (Genoa and Oldani), prosciutto, hot capicola, soppressata, and lots more. 

  

Also had a delicious lunch there and then homemade dinner before visiting with the Blundys and Sarah and Matt. I have no pictures of that but if I were to describe the scene…  “some old friends, catching up in the basement over wine and heavily fermented honey while Crowley cowers in the corner” … would about sum it up.  It was a nice visit!  Aimee worked on a scrumptious cherry pie the next morning and they turned out great!

 

Few trips to Lansing are complete without a trip to Georgio’s and Beggar’s Banquet in East Lansing.  We met up with Matt and Allison for brunch on Christmas Eve at Beggars.  They weren’t busy for we lingered over Bloody Marys and coffee and got to catch up for a while.

We celebrated the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord at St. Gerard, 6:30pm edition.  Aimee and I posed with [a very bored] Crowley in front of the stocking array and Christmas tree. 

When it comes to online tools, I’m a “Google” kind of guy for the most part (Gmail, Calendar, Documents, and of course Picasa).  However, Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 is refreshingly easy to use.  I’m not ready to convert just yet but I used their “Photo Fuse” tool to create the family picture below and was quite impressed.**

Overall we just had a great visit – food, family, friends, festivity, and a feline-like dog.

 

I hope everyone has a great year-end.  Aimee and I will be visiting Veni, Vidi, Vici for their Prix Fixe NYE dinner following mass at IHM. 

Coming soon to a blog near you:  I’ll take an in-depth look at analytics from our blog visitors, how often they visit, where they visit from, and more…

Footnotes:
* I flew with her from Minneapolis to Chicago when she was 8 weeks but I don’t really count it because neither of us really knew what was going on.
** Also, I’m using Windows Live Writer to create my posts now because the Blogger interface is just not flexible enough.