Merry Christmas Everyone!

It was a day of fun, celebration, giving, receiving, love, and OMGSOMUCHFOOD.

Quick zip to yesterday...quiet day. I vowed not to go shopping anywhere and I kept my vow. It' s nice not to have to go out into the madness that is Christmas Eve shopping. Boys napped in the afternoon. We had leftover taco bake for supper. Jason was out visiting friends more much of the afternoon and evening.

We got ready and went to church. Yes, my husband came to church too. Only because I told a Little White (Christmas) LIE and told him Cindy's honey was going. heehee. We sat with my parents and my sister, and Kelly, Ben & Doug. The service was about to start when I felt the cell phone ring. I decided to answer it, and it was Chris's dad. He was out of town and needed a ride back since he couldn't get his car started. So Chris was off the hook for church and went to rescue his dad. It turned out later that he would have rather been in church! Whoa!

Anyhoo, church was lovely and cozy and then we drove to the cemetary where my Mom and Dad had placed ice candles at my grandparents' graves. You wouldn't believe how many ice candles were there. It's become such the rage to do this. You take a gallon ice cream pail, or a 5-gallon bucket, or some people are creative making various shapes. Fill the bucket with water, and put something in the middle (I'd have to ask, I don't quite know what they use) to keep a hollow space in the middle to house the candle. My mom coloured hers this year. But there were hundreds and hundreds of the things all over the cemetary. It was quite beautiful. Like I wish the Google Earth people took a picture of it 'cause there would have been a lot of lights visible from space!

After the cemetary, we drove by the Schells' house. This family is renowned for their Christmas decorations. They have every inflatable lawn decoration, zillions of Christmas lights and tons of animated and even musical decorations covering their yard. Ice sculptures, etc. Each year they continue to outdo themselves and in more recent years have had to borrow electricity from their neighbours so as not to brownout their power supply! I'll post a picture here when I empty out the camera tomorrow.

I couldn't sleep last night so I did a little creating. I made some address labels for Chris's grandpa and for my mom (forgot to give them to her)...and I made a CD case calendar for Chris's grandpa. He's out of town for Christmas so we'll see him tomorrow and give him his gifts. I stayed up way late and still had a hard time going to sleep when I went to bed after one-thirty. I tried calling Helen in Australia a couple times but it took me a couple tries to get the country codes and city codes correct when dialing her number. Finally I got through around one-thirty. They were just about to sit down to Christmas dinner. Way cool.

I got a little sleep before we all got up around seven-thirty. Chris or Jason picked up their Dad to come over and exchange gifts. It was crazy around here for awhile. The boys got more toys. Chris got me some cool camouflage pants and a t-shirt, a flashlight and some of my favourite perfume scented body lotion. Kelly gave me a gift certificate for an office supply store, "Clean Cotton" room spray and candle jar from Yankee candles, and gift certificates for Tim Hortons. I got an oil burner (is that what they're called?) from the Body Shop...you put the oil in the holder and light a candle under it. With two different scented oils. Nice. Also got some money and socks and stuff.

THEN we went to Pete & Claudine's house for breakfast. Oh my God what a spread. There was a mountain of cream puffs with blueberry sauce oozing down it. I spent a lot of time on that mountain! There were egg soufflés and two kinds of sausages, homemade bacon, fruit salads, belgian waffles with various fruit toppings and whipping cream. And carmel cream cheese and man oh man I can't remember what else. A hyuuuuuuuge pot of hot chocolate on the stove. Ginormous breakfast was had by all. We got more gifts there. I'm going to have to do a massive inventory of all the new awesome stuff in our house so I can blog the rest of the gifts we got.

We went home and Cooper was asleep. I took Chris's dad back to his car and he got it going again. I came home and we got ready again to go to Cindy's house. I started feeling really rough and tired so Cindy took Cooper and I headed upstairs to attempt a nap. Of the forty-five minutes I was sequestered, I think I actually napped for about twenty. Not bad with all the activity going on in the house!

I felt really queasy after I got up and a drink of water helped. Chris had taken Carter outside sliding with all the other kids. Glad I didn't have to pull him up that hill! I felt progressively better and managed to eat another gargantuan meal. Turkey. Big massive turkey. If we had Big Bird for Thanksgiving, then this was his big brother. And he was stuffed as he could be with stuffing. Mashed potatoes. Gravy. Ham. Apparently there were two hams. Vegetables, salads, breads and buns. Meat pies. Desserts. Desserts. OMG. I was stuffed but somehow throughout the evening I had three helpings of dessert.

After supper, being that it was such a long day, some of the relatives went home. We stayed to visit and had a round of Trivial Pursuit. Turns out it was the Canadian Edition, so we hardly knew any of the answers. haha! Still it was fun. Chris & Jason's dad left so we had to squish Chris into the back seat of the Jeep between the car seats and Jason sat up front. I drove since there seemed to be some mass consumption of wine after dinner particularly by the men.

It was a grand day. Much of our family is away for Christmas, but we had a great time with Cindy and her new family. Looks like the start of many new traditions. Sometimes change sucks, but sometimes, change is good. Like today. Merry Christmas Everyone. Thank you God for this wonderful day and for bringing us together with all our wonderful family and friends.