A few late Christmas shots & Ethiopian Cuisine

We had a fun night out this weekend at a restaurant in Houston called The Blue Nile. A month or so ago I posted on my blog that our agency wanted us to go out and learn about Ethiopian food. My friend Brittnie posted on my blog that she would love to go try Ethiopian food with me, so we made it a date. Brittnie and her hubby along with my sister and her hubby all went to the Blue Nile and had some very interesting food. I really do intend to make it a priority to learn how to make Ethiopian food, but it will definitely be a struggle. I haven't all together mastered cooking in my 5 years of marriage and new things are not always a huge success!

But the food was very yummy! I had lamb, Lance had some type of ground beef with greens and cheese and I don't remember what all else was eaten. But it was all very very good. The extra interesting part was that they didn't serve your food with silverware. They brought out a spongy type of bread, I think it was called Injerna, and you used that to scoop up your food. I was loving it. I was also probably a bit of a creeper, b/c I could not help but stare at all the beautiful Ethiopian servers and wonder if Jane was going to look like them one day. They were such beautiful people! We had a really fun night, however I guess we showed our true colors at the end of the night b/c we went to Dairy Queen for a blizzard! :)

I cannot wait to celebrate her culture with her. I often wonder if she will be very proud and want to share her culture and background with others, or if she will want to blend in. I hope we do a good job of making her want to celebrate her differences! I want that for her. :)

Notice Lance's "fork"

The other side of the table enjoying their food. Bethany actually got a crazy dish that was like 6 things mixed together.

We decided that we should make it a monthly international dinner night and try a different type of food each month. I think the decision for next month was Greek food. Can't wait! :)

On a different note I was looking through my camera and realized that I never posted any Christmas pics. I only took about 10 and 5 of those would probably get me killed if I posted them on the blog. They were all taken at about 6am. But we had a great Christmas with the family. We got together with the whole huge group one night which was crazy, kids running everywhere and lots and lots of fun! Christmas eve was a little more low key with the cousins and aunts and uncles. Christmas day half of our extended family was unfortunately hit with RSV and the kiddos were all SO sick. It was awful and took a while for everyone to bounce back from that.
Due to the illness we weren't able to get together with our extended family so Lance & I, the Girods and my parents literally spent all day (I mean 6am-midnight) at my parents house watching basketball, playing games, playing on the wii, going for walks (yep in our pj's) and eating TONS and TONS of food. It was an AWESOME AWESOME day!!

This was the day after Christmas. The Girods came over to our house and we took little Maxwell to the park. It is still surreal that they live here. Betho and I went and ran errands right after this pic and were both just laughing the whole time about how crazy it is that we are actually "running errands" together and live 10 minutes apart. I never thought that would happen!

Max opening his Santa presents at my Mom's house

Little snow bunny came over to Aunt KK's house to ice sugar cookies!! This is one of my favorite pics of him. He looks SO CUTE!