Christmas

Well, its Christmas. I still love this day the same as when I was a kid. All the build up and I never have a let down. Its alot of work to do everything, food, gifts, parties, but I still think its great. Fortunately, my immediate family feels the same way. I have watched others and they seem to fall off the Christmas bandwagon over the years. Fine for others, but I want to keep all my traditions intact. Forever.

After not sleeping last night, and kids coming home so late (early?) only Emily had the energy to getbout of bed. I woke up early and could not get back to sleep. But, I still did not want to get up.

Eventually we both got moving. By moving I mean we sat up in bed and opened our stockings. A word here about stockings in this family. Every Christmas we adults randomly choose another adult relative to do a atocking for. We figured, long ago when we set this up, that it would be easier for each of us to only do one. Plus we do our kids, if we want. And in our family, I also do a stocking for Emily and she does one for me. So when I say we opened stockings I meant plural. Now the kids got in at 4 am so neither was awake and doing the Christmas thing. So when we finished we had time to shower and dress. And go downstairs and get breakfast going.

So, what I have described here used up the entire morning. We sat down to eat breakfast at 1130. Crazy. But, kids had opened their stockings at least. By noon we were ready for opening the gifts Santa brought us.

I took fewer pictures than I thought. But I did get a picture of everyone who was there. Thats most important. We all had fun, drank too much champagne as usual, opened gifts which were all perfect, and had a Christmas to remember.

I am not sure what we will remember most about this Christmas. I am sure the lack of propane and having to use every other means available to cook with will top the list. Or maybe we will remember it as the last one in this house. We have two offers coming in on the house and will probably be moving within a couple months. Or maybe we will remember it as Taffy’s last Christmas, as I wrote about recently. I dont know. I have had almost 60 Christmases and I can only remember parts of some. Others are completely gone to memory. I wish I had paid better attention. This blog does help that. If only I can record the best parts.

After gifts, we kinda just sat around and chatted. Post bacchanalian thing I guess. We had lunch, slowly. There was some football on TV. I did not watch. About 430 we started seriously considering making dinner. Michael took the prime rib to a friends house, also close neighbor, to hopefully get it cooked better than our okie kitchen could do. Tough to go back and forth and cook like that. But we managed. I made another lemon meringue pie, the one Dee made yesterday was not so good. But with our current shitty facilities it is not easy to bake. My pie was better but only by degrees. Emily made very good Yorkshire pudding even though the oven she used is older than her, lacks a thermostat, and is plugged in on the porch. Some things make no sense. Dinner was excellent.

We again sat around for awhile. Then of course we did all the dishes. There is alot of kitchen time if you want great holiday meals. We just need to figure out how to cook on paper pots and pans. I ran the dishwasher twice today. Yikes. And its almost full again.

Well, to top it all off we had dessert. Aforementioned lemon pie and Emilys famous chocolate cookie wafer cake with whipped cream frosting. Pecan pie available, no takers. As a kid, holiday desserts were my favorite. Probably why I like to make pies every holiday. As an adult, I still love them but dont want to get fat. So i cant eat double helpings. It sucks.

After dessert, everyone was ready for bed. Even the two who party all night. I am still not sleeping well but hope to eventually get back to a better sleep pattern. I am even lying here blogging because I am not tired yet. At midnight. I really hate that. But, its still Christmas for another ten minutes. And I want to enjoy it. It only comes by once a year.