Later that day, we hosted the Johnson family Christmas dinner complete with Potato Sausage (Swedish thing) and my grandmother's recipe for Ham and yeast rolls (YUM!). It was a wonderful get together and had some friendly competition with the white elephant gift exchange and Rook (cards). As Vicki and I compared our battle wounds and burns from the oven, everyone was actually able to fit in our house comfortably. Thanks to the newly completed basement, we could all gather together around the tree. We all (16 of us) sat at the same table for dinner which was a wonderful treat. I'm very thankful to everyone that made it and didn't complain about my cooking! Although, personally, I couldn't find anything to complain about - I thought all the food was actually quite amazing (thanks, Mom, for all the holiday lessons).
Day after Christmas, we headed north to the Cabin for about 24 hours to relax and hike through the snow a bit. I seemed to keep holding everyone up and moving so slow with my big winter boots and the 1' of snow we were trudging through...we had to take lots of photo op breaks for me...
The scenery was amazing and hiking through the 'North country' is always great fun. Not a whole lot of wind and very minimal snow made for the perfect hiking weather. Out on the lake, we found a few spots for ice fishing (or in Art's case, getting a drink of water...). I still can't get over that you can actually drive out on the ice with cars and trucks and even build a little house right on top of the ice! Out of habit, I always have to check the ice before I walk out - even if there is a car out in the middle of the lake.
