A first: Christmas at home

The past couple of years we've had some crazy Christmas breaks. Last year gets the "craziest" award, (here's a day-by-day breakdown) which involved traveling, moving, visitors, and lots of trips to Ikea. The year before we went home to Louisiana and then to the Adirondacks for an anniversary trip.  Naturally, we both craved a more relaxing holiday this year, so we decided we'd do Christmas at home.

And we did. After a short trip to see my family we returned to Frederick on the night of Christmas Eve. I asked Bogdan to stop at the grocery store (it was closing in 30 minutes, so we definitely had good timing) and I bought a few things for a nice Christmas dinner.

We woke up Christmas morning and saw it was snowing outside—a white Christmas. The snow continued through the morning, sticking at first and by noon it was just melting and then it slowly ended. We opened a few presents sitting in front of our Christmas tree and enjoyed the peace and quiet. I started preparing our dinner that morning, marinating the roast according to Julia Child's braised beef recipe. In the afternoon I browned the beef and put it in the oven for a long and slow roast.

The house started smelling delicious. I made butter braised carrots, mashed potatoes, and crescent rolls. After our braised beef was done I finished the sauce and arranged our dinner table. The beef was perfectly tender and juicy (yet another Julia Child recipe success) and we enjoyed our candlelit Christmas dinner.

The day was a perfectly peaceful day. It was quiet. We rested. We sat in the library and read books and talked. We shared a great meal.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!