Just like Thanksgiving dinner, all that shopping and prepping and it’s over in 15 minutes. Same with Christmas, my most favorite time of the year. All that shopping and wrapping … I guess it’s the entire season that’s my favorite. I love the anticipation and excitement of loved ones opening their presents. I love to stretch it out. That’s why each person opens his or her gift before the next person. We hardly ever open gifts at the same time. I don’t want to miss a thing.
We had the opportunity to open gifts a couple of times. Once with the Osten/Moad gang and again with the Moad gang on Christmas morning. Rather, twice with the Moad folks. After mass on Christmas Eve, we came home and opened our silly Christmas pj’s.
One other family tradition in our family is “assigned names” for each person. We’ve been doing this for years, topics such as: candy bars, Star Wars characters, baseball players, songs, actors, you name it! This year is was the Greek Alphabet (a bit of learning item – hint, hint). Next year, maybe familiar quotes … The kids want at least two names each, Wow, it’s getting more and more complicated.
Christmas dinner was a fun time; I leisurely cooked all day after we got through opening gifts. We ate around 4:30 Christmas day. Ham, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, fruit dip w/strawberries, pineapple & apple slices, stuffing, crescent rolls – oh, and broccoli casserole. No sweet potatoes, I did those at Thanksgiving (I’m the only one who eats them).
Christmas is a bit different, the kids don’t wake up at the crack of dawn like they used to. This group of grands are all teenagers now. They actually had to be woken up. Addyson stumbled out of bed from her castle in the loft. She came down covering her eyes, her Dad led her back down the hallway to where the boys’ room is so they could all enter the living room together. You gotta love it! The sheer magic of Christmas can’t be beat!
The day after Christmas, our company boarded a plane for Breckenridge for 5 or 6 days of skiing. I hope there was some snow! Warmest Christmas I can remember. I had the A/C on low so we could wear our Christmas jammies and later our Christmas sweatshirts.
Holy Cow! Woke up at 3 AM Monday morning to hurricane-force winds, outside stuff blowing and clanging all over the place. By 8 AM, time to go to work, the temp had dropped to the 50’s. I guess it’s wintertime again.
The oldest child has returned from Christmas with Colorado/Laramie/Dallas family and kids. She said, “what happened to the weather, it’s colder here than Colorado!”
Well, Darlin’ … It’s Texas, you never know what you’re gonna get!?!
Another jumbled up week, New Years Day on Thursday, then back to work on Friday. Don’t forget your LUCKY food – Black-eyed peas with a ham bone, some cabbage and cornbread. We still have ham from Christmas or maybe I’ll do a pork loin. Warning: I had to dig to the back of the shelf at The Big Store for black-eyed peas. Don’t get caught without!
Happy New Year y’all, I’ll talk at ya later!
