We celebrated our Christmas together on Sunday, December 13. We initially planned to exchange our gifts before heading home, for the ease of having a few less things to travel with, but with the donation of a "Christmas dinner" from DTS, we decided to make a day of it. It was really pretty awesome - David came home on Saturday with a huge box of goodies, including a 14 lb frozen turkey, a huge apple pie (the good kind from Costco!), stuffing mix, potatoes, carrots, bell 
peppers, rolls, canned green beans, corn & cranberry sauce. About the only things I had to get were gravy, an onion, sparkling cider & a bag for the turkey! This was my first turkey, and initially I was pretty intimidated, but it turned out to be very easy!We spent the afternoon finishing up with the wrapping of gifts, putting the topper on our little tree & munching on goodies while watching the only Chargers game that has been aired in Dallas this season (and they won!) - if you didn't know, David is a Chargers fan =) After the game, we ate a late Christmas dinner, cleaned up (as per McIntosh tradition), then opened gifts & watched "A Christmas Story" (A Thornhill favorite). David got me the new Harry Potter movie (yay!) & completed my collection of Harry Potter DVDs. I got David a long-overdue disc golf bag with disc, Iron Man & some Starbucks "Christmas Blend" coffee.
It was a very good day =)
We headed home to LA on the morning of December 23. After aimlessly driving around the airport's remote parking lot until 6am, we had fears of missing our 7am flight when we couldn't find a single parking space. Thankfully we found another lot that wasn't much more expensive, but told us exactly where to park, picked us up at our car & even gave us free water. There was no waiting time at the airport & we made our flight with time to spare. We headed to In-N-Out almost immediately after landing (I say almost because it took so long to get there with traffic, welcome home!)
The rest of our time with my folks was mostly spent with Christmas preparations - wrapping gifts, last minute shopping, cleaning & cooking. We did make some time for a dinner out and a few rounds of ping pong! Christmas Eve was spent at home with dinner, a phone call to my Uncle Jim in North Dakota & exchanging gifts with my parents & my Grandma Lockwood. Christmas morning we opened our stockings from Santa & spent the afternoon with my Dad's side of the family (my grandma, aunt, uncle, & 2 cousins with their kiddos). My three little cousins are getting to very fun ages (2, 3 & 5), which makes Christmas a little chaotic, but much more fun, especially when opening gifts =) It was really good to catch up a little and see everyone. And very exciting to hear the announcement of a new little one coming in August from my cousin Heidi!!!
We arrived in time for dinner in SD on Christmas Day & spent the evening opening gifts & playing the "nut prize" game (the Thornhills buy a new game every Christmas & the process of searching for the nut in your bowl of tapioca pudding determines who gets to open it up). David's family is very creative with gifts. His Dad worked for months to give us (& Brett) an album full of all their home videos he had edited & converted to DVD! Brett gave me a jar filled with a note to read every day for the next year & made David a personalized Monopoly board - "The David Thornhill Edition." It includes spaces like the places he's worked, lived & gone to school - so awesome!!
The rest of our time was mostly spent relaxing - we played games, watched a few movies, took another trip to In-N-Out & had a game night with family friends the DeVries (Shawn was David's best man). We headed back up to LA yesterday morning & met my parents for lunch before heading back to Dallas. We crawled into bed last night around midnight, exhausted from our full trip to CA and back, already missing the family we just left, but happy to be home. I am hoping they will visit soon!
