It's Christmas Eve morning, I'm sitting here in front of my Christmas tree and the sunlight glinting off of the tinsel is so pretty.
Its been a busy weekend. We're in a fairly good place, but I wasn't able to do many things I usually do for Christmas. We helped my Mom throw a huge 70th birthday party for my Dad on Saturday. There were about 75 people present. Between setting up on Friday, preparing and serving and cleaning up on Saturday and visiting with my Mom, Dad and Mom's older half brother and his wife in the evening, I lost about a day and a half of usual Christmas prep time. But that's okay, the party went very well, Dad was surprised (mostly… got suspicious in the parking lot) and pleased.
We finally got to frost our sugar cookies yesterday afternoon. I only managed to make four different kinds of cookies and never got to the schnicker doodles or snowballs. I usually make homemade cinnamon rolls and cheese braid Danish for Christmas morning, but not this year. I took JL to work at 7:00 am and went to the grocery store for a few last minute things, including Pillsbury cinnamon rolls and Enteman's cheese Danish. oh well.
All the kids gifts are wrapped. I just need to wrap Joe's gifts and stocking stuffers today.
Today's plan (after taking JL to work, going to grocery store, having breakfast, and starting laundry ) is to:
- pick up common living areas with kids (need to recover from party)
- finish EE's, Joe's and my laundry (Monday is our day)
- wrap Joe's gifts and stocking stuffers
- get ready for evening (make parmesan artichoke dip and a steamed vegetable …we are going to my brother's home this year for Christmas Eve, his wife is making a German pork casserole. Should be yummy!)
JL and Joe get off of work at 3:00 and 3:30 so we'll head over to my brother's house after they get home. We are borrowing friends' guitar Hero and will be bringing that (My sister in law asked if we could bring it). Should be a fun evening.
This evening we'll have our final evening advent devotion before going to bed. We're going to let the kids sleep in the family room together tonight. they like to be together Christmas morning when they get their stockings…. well, the younger three do, JL wants to sleep until Joe and I get up.
We have broccoli quiche, Danish, cinnamon rolls, orange juice, coffee and hot chocolate for breakfast.
Dinner will be steak fondue, baked white and sweet potatoes, spinach nuggets and salad.
My parents will come by for a visit some time tomorrow and we hope Joe's parents are up to spending several hours with us… maybe have a meal with us.
Merry Christmas to all!
oh, btw… another thing I didn't manage to get done was Christmas cards…. so if you are a friend reading this blog, I didn't forget you... I just didn't manage to get cards done... or the strawberry bread I usually make and give to friends... :::sigh::: sometimes we just need to let things go...
and there is always next year...