…and all through the house there is still a bit of clutter and everyone’s puttering around with their new stuff.

Overall we had a nice Christmas. It was wet rather than white — according to the weather man, there is record of only 6 white Christmases here, the last one in 1947. Christmas Eve we had a regular Sun. night church service except it was an hour earlier and it was mostly special music. Beautiful! Then we got together with two of my sisters, my niece, and one sister’s boyfriend at a Mexican food restaurant…’cause nothing says Christmas Eve like Mexican food. 🙂 Actually it was one of the few restaurants open, but we all love Mexican food anyway. Those two sisters live only about 40 minutes away from us, but out schedules are so different we rarely see each other. It was good to catch up.

I had made my pumpkin pie Sun. afternoon but didn’t have time to make the apple one. I thought about doing it after we got home in the evening, but it was 9:00 then and I just wanted to rest. So I stretched out on the couch with a book and dozed off, then woke up later in the evening and my husband wrapped a couple of bigger gifts for under the tree and I filled stockings with candy, cards from grandparents, and a few other little goodies.

I woke up around 5 Christmas morning — that’s my usual wake-up time, but I had been sleeping in til 7 or so, so I was surprised I woke up. I went ahead and got up and got breakfast together. The kids don’t like to bother with breakfast but I have low blood sugar and need to eat something. So I compromise and make something that can sit on the counter and people can much on as desired. Usually it’s “Sister Schubert’s” cinnamon rolls and sausages in yeast rolls (my family in TX calls those kolaches), but I couldn’t find either of those this year. So I got the little smoked sausages and wrapped them in crescent rolls and got some Cinnabon frozen mini cinnamon rolls to microwave. I got everything ready to heat up and then had a few quiet moments for devotions. I was surprised everyone slept — usually they are all up by 6 on Christmas. One by one they straggled in, but we had to go in and wake up our youngest, which was even more unusual!

My husband read the Christmas story from Luke 2, we prayed, and then my youngest passed out a present for each person. We opened them one at a time and oohed, aahed, and told the stories behind them before going on to the next round.

I took a shower and got the ham in the oven, then called my step-dad. We had missed each other on our last 3 attempts to make contact. It turned out I called at just the right time, because they had just had breakfast and opened gifts and my one sister and her friend were leaving shortly, and my step-dad and youngest sister and her family were leaving in a while to go to his mom’s. I was able to talk to my one sister before she left and talk to my step-dad for a little while.

Then it was about time to make the au gratin potatoes (the boxed kind 🙂 ) and vegetable medley — fresh broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots chopped and cooked with minced onion, a little water, and chicken flavored bouillon. We had dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, and I peeled and chopped the apples and made apple pie. Once when I was cutting down on sugar, I substituted apple juice for the sugar called for in the recipe, and my husband liked it a lot better that way, especially made with tart rather than sweet apples. So I have made it that way ever since. While that was in the oven I curled up with a book again and dozed off. Some time in the afternoon different ones had different slices of pie, then in the early evening we each munched on various things — a ham sandwich or our Mexican food leftovers from the night before. We called my husband’s mom and sister in the evening.

All throughout yesterday and today we all puttered and played with various things. Jim got a small remote control helicopter which the guys all had fun with — by the afternoon Jim was getting better at controlling it. Jeremy put a bunch of CDs on his new Ipod. This morning Jason and Jim have been using Jeremy’s new tools (he’ll likely be moving out in the next year or two ( 😦 )and wanted to start his own collection of tools) to install some system for Jason to listen to his Ipod on his car speakers. Jason got speakers for his Ipod (among other Ipod accessories) that he set up in his room yesterday. Jesse finished his Lego Star Wars space ship and played his new video games. He and Jeremy played his Khet laser game. One of my favorite things that Jesse received was a shirt from ThinkGeek with a picture of the galaxy and a “You Are Here” sign. My husband got me a new NASB Bible and Boyd’s Bear figurine of a couple sitting on a log, because we got engaged sitting on a log. 🙂 Jeremy likes to get something not on everyone’s lists, and this year I was really touched by what he thought of. When we watched End of the Spear, I was filling in the story to my family with various things I had read over the years. At some point I mentioned that I would love to see the original Life Magazine that had the story of the 5 missionaries who were killed in 1956. Well, Jeremy searched and finally found one on Ebay bundled with some other magazines from 1956. (He’s going to try to sell the others back on Ebay — anyone have a need for a 1956 Life magazine? 🙂 )

There were other things that each of us got, but those are some of the highlights. I’ve been sewing this morning for the first time in a long time for an upcoming birthday present — I really do need to see about glasses besides my little Wal-Mart reading glasses! I need to get back at it, but was taking a few minutes off while eating lunch and thought I’d share a little about our Christmas. There were a few tears Christmas evening because that was when I would normally call my mother, after all the other events and visiting had calmed down. I’ve missed her a lot this year. I did make contact with all my immediate family except my brother, so I might try to get him some time before the week is out.

Everyone here is off from work and school all this week, so we have an extended time to just putter around. I don’t know when we’ll take the tree down — probably by the end of the week or New Year’s day. I was surprised to read how many of you take it all down today. We didn’t get ours up until I think the second week-end in Dec., so I like to savor it a bit before getting everything back to “normal.”

Hope you have a good day!