Christmas in Dallas

Good morning! I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! Our Christmas was nice, although a few things did not go according to plan.

Except cookies...cookies always go according to plan!

Our original Christmas Eve plans were to order Chinese food and watch Christmas movies all night. Unfortunately, there were only two Chinese restaurants nearby that were open. One of which we had already tried and didn't like--the crab rangoon were tiny...who does that?! The other one had soy in the only Chinese dish I like to order (sesame chicken). So that one was out. We decided to be flexible--we could have Mexican instead. There were plenty of semi-fast-food Mexican places around. And they all happened to be closed by the time we drove around looking for dinner. We parked and walked down the street to a Mexican restaurant we had been wanting to try and they were open.

Copper waiting for Santa Paws!

I had never planned on having dinner in a restaurant on Christmas Eve (pretty sure I was wearing sweat pants). But that's where we ended up. So I ordered a margarita and Chris ordered a Corona-rita, which the waiter proceeded to drop and spill all over our table and the floor. We moved tables, Chris got another Corona-rita and we snacked on chips and salsa, which were really good. I was amazed by how many large groups of people/families were there for dinner. Up until now, I've never eaten out on Christmas Eve--we always have dinner and do gifts with my dad's family.

Margarita and chips and salsa for Christmas Eve dinner

All in all, the food was just average. It wasn't anything spectacular, and they brought me a beef tamale instead of chicken, so I had to send it back. In spite of all that, I made sure that we tipped our waiter well because it was Christmas and I felt extremely bad about being in a restaurant on Christmas Eve (and the kid was clearly having a rough night).

We went home and I was no longer in the mood to watch Christmas movies, so we watched the last three episodes of the first season of How to Get Away With Murder on Netflix. That show is incredible. We also drank a six-pack of Schlafly's Christmas Ale and I learned that I get drunk/hungover pretty quick these days on a margarita and three beers. Oops.

It's just not Christmas without Schlafly.

Chris also gave me my gift on Christmas Eve (he already had his from when we went shopping--Christmas gets pretty boring as an adult). He got me a yoga membership! I was so excited about it that I stayed up practically all night looking at their website and the classes they offer (I also had a headache and couldn't sleep...thanks beer). The membership is a little pricier than what I'm used to paying.

When I was doing yoga at the Civic Center in Florissant, it worked out to be $3-4 per class which is cheap. Another studio in Ferguson/Florissant charged about $10 per class. Chris did the math for the membership for this studio (Dallas Yoga Center) and it works out to be about $11 per class if I go three times a week. It's definitely more than what I'm used to paying, but not as expensive as other studios I had seen in the area. He also drove up there from the apartment to see exactly how far of a walk it would be for me (I'm only car-less for a few more days, but I like being able to walk when I can).  I went to my first class yesterday and it was fantastic. It was a Vinyasa flow class and it was a great workout! I'm planning on going to another class today as long as it's not raining too hard!

On Christmas morning we woke up and walked down the street to get some Starbucks and then took the dog for a walk. When we got back we didn't have much to do. We sat around watching Back to the Future on tv for a while. Eventually we got motivated and got some more boxes unpacked and got some more pictures hung up. (Almost ready to post pictures!) Later that day we went over to my cousin's house for dinner. It was so nice to have a place to go for Christmas dinner (because we obviously weren't gonna be able to have Chinese). The food was delicious and we had a great time spending the evening with them and their friends. We came home that night and took Copper for a walk. It was still above 70 degrees and I was wearing sandals! The weather was absolutely beautiful!

As for exercise, in addition to the yoga class I took on Saturday, I walked roughly 30 miles last week. That's about 9 miles more than what I did the week before. I've really been enjoying walking just about everywhere. Hopefully I don't get too lazy once I have my car back.

Chris's parents are driving my car down from St. Louis tomorrow and they'll be down here with us for Chris's birthday (NYE) and New Year's Day. I'm looking forward to seeing them, but I've got a lot of cleaning up to do before they get here!

Tonight we're going to see the Blues play the Stars (Blues won last night in a 9-round shootout!).

I wanted to take a family picture for Christmas...this was the best we could do.