Christmas Road Trip

Christmas was very grand because it was celebrated with the grandchildren and family.

Our first stop was before the actual holiday and we celebrated it early with the youngest granddaughter. We brought birthday and Christmas gifts to open during our visit. Birthday gifts were opened first, then it was time to open the Christmas gifts as in the above ↑ photos.

After, we drove to our home state of NJ, where we visited with niece and great niece, Julie and Autumn Rose who visited at our hotel.

We went out to dinner with my brother and SIL (no photos) and exchanged gifts found in our respective states. Our gift was Taylor pork roll, which we haven't been able to find in local NH supermarkets. 

If you're wondering what it is, nothing good. It's a processed pork product made with spices, salt, a sugar cure, and preservatives and smoked before being packaged. We enjoy it with eggs, but it's also popular as a breakfast sandwich. In North Jersey it's known as Taylor ham; those in South Jersey and Philly call it pork roll.

We had a white Christmas Eve morning in Warwick, RI, after waking up to views of a lightly falling snow as seen from our hotel window. It was enough to coat local roadways as we headed out for our next family visit.

Grandson was very happy with his gifts, a drone and gift card.

Among her gifts, oldest granddaughter was puzzled by a small box that when opened had a lot of ? marks. We told her that it was an I don't know gift since that's what she had said when asked her gift preference in December. There was also a gift card hidden beneath all the ?s. 

Grenville and daughter also enjoyed opening their gifts. 

It's been a long-standing practice in our family (maybe in yours as well?) to just let the gift wrapping accumulate in a pile and bag it all up after all gift opening is done.

Youngest granddaughter was also opening gifts on Christmas morning. She wanted to make sure Santa had treats so the day before, she mixed dough for a batch of cookies.

She and her dad worked on a gingerbread house. Grandpa and granddaughter did the same in RI. The frosting (top right) was more problematic than anticipated; front windows were very snow icing-covered.

While there were many penguins around in a snow globe, ornament, holiday card, and a pillow, the absence of frogs was noted this Christmas.

We dined out on Christmas Day for a traditional holiday meal. While the plan was to order a duck entree as in the film, A Christmas Story, it wasn't on the menu. Instead, our choices were a stir fry Pad Thai and Sashimi. Both were delicious. We dined early, a good plan as on exiting there was a waiting crowd; others had the same idea.

That's it for the holiday tour this year and, most likely, for a while to come. We're not expecting to see everyone again until mid-2022. There's been a flurry of posts (not snow) the past couple of weeks as these were time-sensitive. Thanks to all for your comments and well wishes.

We hope your Christmas holiday was a joyful and peaceful one. Even though we covered several states in a short time, we were happy to spend time visiting family in each.