Christmas, BC

The BC at our house stands for either Before Children or Before The Girl (since her name starts with a C)...works the same.  I'm sure I have pictures somewhere, I may add them later..

Mr. Ranch and I met the fall of my Senior year at Purdue, which was the fall of his freshman year.  That first Christmas, our group of friends had a nice Christmas dinner at my apartment before Mr Ranch headed home--he bought me a pretty pair of gold heart ear rings when he was home over Thanksgiving and gave them to me at our party.  If I remember right, we even cooked a turkey in the world's smallest oven. For Christmas we both went to our parents and after Christmas I flew out to New Hampshire to meet his family and spend New Year's.  We did a lot of tourist things in the Lakes Region and even made it up to Maine to meet his Grandparents.  The airline lost my luggage (they did eventually deliver it) but the first night Mr. Ranch's 15 year old sister offered to loan me sweat pants...um, even then I couldn't wear her clothes...I think she was a foot shorter than me at the time...Mr Ranch's uncle (who now lives only a few miles from us) gave me a copy of The Bodyguard soundtrack, saying "I hear chicks like this stuff".  I realized the other day that this was probably the year Mr. Ranch's parents gave me an LL Bean sweater that I still wear. Hmm...That would make it, um 21 years old? My sweater could legally buy beer.  Interesting.

We spent at least one Christmas with Mr Ranch's relatives in Michigan and lots with my parents, who only lived about 30 minutes from Purdue, where Mr. Ranch was finishing his undergrad degrees.  Mr Ranch's aunt's house has three bedrooms that intersect/connect upstairs.  One memorable year, Mr Ranch's dad and sister had cots in one of the rooms, while one of his cousins and his wife had bedroom #2, and we had bedroom #3.  The cousin's wife was convinced that there was a ghost...based on the rustling noise she heard all night...she refused to believe it was simply Mr. Ranch's sister's running pants that she was wearing because she was cold in the unheated upstairs. That Christmas Mr Ranch's aunt made a never ending pot of what the family now calls "Tortilla Soup".  She must have just added bits to it every day to keep her three kids, their spouses/girlfriends, kids,and us fed!  It is my go-to recipe for big groups--if unexpected people show up, you can always just add more "stuff".

After we moved to Colorado, Mr Ranch's mom lived near-by and his dad and sister came out a few times.  We have great pictures of Mr. Ranch's sister in short sleeves feeding the ducks on our front porch on a warm Christmas day.

One very memorable Christmas, the last official Christmas before kids, we had five house guests (and us and two cats and a dog) in our 1600 square foot townhouse.  My brother, one of his college roommates (from the UK), Mr Ranch's mom and dad, and his sister all stayed with us.  AH (the roommate) introduced us all to Christmas crackers.  We had a Christmas grab bag exchange-AH brought us all key chains with pictures of Henry VIII's wives on them.  Several of the key chains seem to have made it onto our Christmas tree that year and continue to appear year after year.  This was the year that we announced that The Girl  would join the family before the next year.  After Christmas, Mr Ranch and I and our siblings piled into our car and drove to California to see Purdue play in the Rose Bowl.  We met Mr Ranch's dad in Phoenix and had a really great time.  We saw a giant hole in the ground in Arizona, Talisen West (my brother was  huge Frank Lloyd Wright fan at the time), then traveled on to California and saw the Rose Bowl, including lots of Alumni events and seafood. On the way back we made a Vegas stop...where I not only got to tour a replica of King Tut's tomb, but was introduced to Krispy Kreme donuts by my brother. (He says, "Come on, I want to show you something..."  I said, "Aw, gee, I'm kind of tired...what is it?"...He says, "Don't worry, it will be great..."  He was right...mmm..donuts...)

Stay tuned for Christmas after Children...lots of fun, but very different...