It was the day after Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not Piper nor a mouse.
Actually, if a mouse was stirring I think Piper would most definitely be stirring too!
Mike and I had a low-key long weekend. On Friday night we went to a friend’s birthday party at a club downtown and it was a lot of fun. We got home late, but we still got up pretty early on Saturday morning, rented a zipvan, and finished moving all of Mike’s stuff to the new apartment. It took two trips. On the second trip, we got to the parking garage of the new apartment after the front office had closed, and the gate to the parking garage was already closed. We have a garage door opener for it, but it was (in)conveniently located in Storm who was back at our old apartment. I went on the inside of the parking garage and waved my hands around a bunch hoping to trigger whatever sensor on the gate allowed it to open from the inside, but no dice. Either I wasn’t in front of the sensor or it wasn’t motion-controlled. Just as Mike and I were ready to give up, someone else drove out of the parking garage, causing the door to open. We scooted on in before the door could shut. It was so nice to not have to drive back to South Lake Union to get the door opener! It would have meant having to extend the zipcar reservation. The rest of the weekend we spent a lot of time unpacking and organizing.
On Monday (Christmas Eve) I got up early and went for a run around Green Lake, and then I went to a special Christmas yoga class at my yoga studio. It was a great class, and extra fun because we did yoga to a Christmas-themed playlist and did a few Christmas-like yoga poses (like tree pose and some elevated snow angels). Later in the day I started some lemon garlic chicken in the slow cooker for Mike. I also sauteed some potatoes, carrots, and broccoli to go with the chicken. Mike liked it a lot, and it was a really easy recipe!
On Christmas morning I woke up early and baked some banana bread. I modified the recipe a little. I added a tsp of vanilla, and sprinkled cinnamon sugar and nutmeg on the top prior to cooking. It kind of crystallized into the top while baking to give the top a nice level of crunchy sweetness. Mike said it was really good, and it made the apartment smell so Christmasy!
Later in the day we went to see Django Unchained, a new Quentin Tarantino movie. It was (as expected based on his previous movies) extremely, cringeworthily violent, but also a great story with great characters where you have no idea what’s going to happen next. Both Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz were amazing, and Leonardo DiCaprio was surprisingly very convincing as a bad, and somewhat unhinged, guy. Afterwards we tried to find a restaurant that was open on Christmas Day where we could eat dinner. Most restaurants were closed, but we discovered that the restaurant where we had lunch after our wedding was open, so we headed there. Since we didn’t have reservations we were seated at the bar. The bar was so gorgeous! Right behind the bar was a huge window that looked out over Lake Union and Seattle… just gorgeous! It was a really relaxing time.
Hope everyone else had a relaxing Christmas too!
rainydayrunner 