joyous, magical and busy

Well, it's over for another year. All the planning and preparing and then the holidays go

by in a flash. I said a few days before Christmas that I couldn't wait for it to be over, and

 that day is here. But truly ~ I had a wonderful Christmas and loved the time spent with family.

Christmas Eve, we met Brian's father and two of his sisters for dinner at a restaurant. The

 place was packed and service was a little slow due to the busyness, but everyone was in 

such a good mood that it didn't matter.  

 My sisters-in-law surprised me with a Le Creuset dutch oven! My mouth actually

dropped open when I opened this. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that

I love to cook. And since I cook a lot, I appreciate quality cookware. Le Creuset is my

favorite, but let's face it, who can afford it? Not me. The only piece I had before this is

a saute pan - which I won in a blog contest over a year ago. I use the saute pan all

the time and it cooks food beautifully and cleans up so easily. And the pan still looks

barely worn. I can see why this cookware lasts "forever" and can be handed down

generations. This gift - to me - is more precious than gems. Forgive the poor quality

photo...I took it with my phone the minute we got home. As you can see by the clock

in the background, it was almost midnight. Yes, I was excited.

After dinner, we then went on to my aunt and uncle's house. They host Christmas

Eve festivities at their house every other year when their son (my cousin) and his 

wife fly in from Washington. I had forgotten my camera and only took a couple

of photos with my phone, so no pics to post of the goings-on that night. I don't

 think you would be interested in seeing photos of my aunt demonstrating

 how to use squat toilets in China or us sitting around a dining room table discussing

the stock market and Sweet Brown videos.  

Tim had to work on Christmas Eve until Christmas morning at 1:00 a.m., so he didn't

get home until 3:30 a.m. He immediately headed to the kitchen and started heating up

food in the microwave, so that's what woke me up. I got out of bed and went into the

kitchen to give my boy a hug and talk to him for a bit. Between that and waking up

numerous times to use the bathroom and shoo the cats out of our room, I was thankful

that we could all sleep in on Christmas day. I made a breakfast casserole and the

three of us relaxed in the living room with our food and coffee, opening gifts and

talking and laughing at the cats playing in the wrapping paper and gift bags.

 

In the afternoon, we went to my sister's house for more festivities.

 What is with teenagers and not wanting to have their picture taken? My boys

did the hands-over-their-face thing too, when they were teens. We had a ton of

wonderful food...appetizers of smoked salmon dip and crackers, guacamole and

tortilla chips, spiced nuts, and party roll-ups, and then Italian beef sandwiches, 

ham, tamales, smoked rib tips and three-layer Christmas jello salad for the meal.

The jello concoction was made by my second cousin, Greg in memory of his mother and

 her sister (which would be Greg's aunt and my grandma) : they used to take turns making

 this dish for family Christmas dinners. Homemade Christmas cookies and my
 mom's homemade French Silk Chocolate pie were on the dessert table. 

With Tim being away at school now, he doesn't get to see his cousins often. And now

that they're older (Tim just turned 24; my nieces are 18 and 16), they all seem to be

much closer. I think when they were younger, the age difference was that Tim thought

of them as pesty little girls (even though he loved them). I love seeing their relationship

evolve, much like mine did with my cousin, Greg.

 Today I actually de-Christmased the entire house! I do this every year on the 26th.

 For me, Christmas is over and 3-1/2 weeks was plenty of time to enjoy the decorations.

I just kept filling up the laundry basket with decorations and Brian made several trips

downstairs to pile everything all over the bar. The hard part will be packing everything

away properly. We ran to Target in the afternoon in hope of scoring gift bags at 50%

off, but we were too late. There was nary a one. We decided on not using traditional

wrapping paper anymore and starting next year, will use brown kraft paper.We found out 

that wrapping paper isn't recyclable! Did you know that? But the brown kraft paper is.

 And it can be decorated in many ways with rubber stamps, doodles and drawings,

 stickers, ribbons, and other embellishments.

However you chose to spend your holiday, I hope it was filled with lots of love.

The best gift of all.