It's Christmas Eve

Well, here we are at the 24th of December.

Who'da thunk it?

If anyone's not ready now, they'd better hurry -- or call themselves ready.

We went out yesterday morning and got, we hope, what we need for our family Christmas on Sunday.  Here's our drill.

On Christmas morning, I'll get John up and make him have his juice before he's allowed to open any gifts (it's a carryover from my childhoold -- my parents figured if they could at least get juice into us before we raided the candy and junk that would surely follow ...)  After we open our gifts, we head into Ottawa where we have breakfast with my Little Chickadee and her family.  That tradition was started a few years back when it became evident that I was going to show up on their doorstep at some point on Christmas morning so I guess they decided they may as well feed me.  Now, we all look forward to it as the true tradition it has become.

We will do our blended family Christmas on the 27th but this year we are just doing munchies while we open our gifts.  With all that we've been through over the past three months, I just wasn't up to putting  on a full sit-down dinner.  The objective is to be with family and this is the compromise we devised:  no muss; no fuss.

Last year, we held our family get-together (with full sit-down dinner) on the 27th of December.  And we had a terrific ice storm that day.  All our guests got stuck trying to get into our place.  We had to call the township to come and sand the roads (it was a holiday -- they hadn't been planning to do anything until the next day).  Again this year, we're having everyone over on the 27th and guess what the forecast is for that date?  Yep, snow, rain, ice ...  Do the weather Gods not realize where we live?

Anyway, here's a photo of my village as it looks now (taken this morning, in fact).

Once a day, the train makes its trip around the village.  When my beautiful boy is here, he has that train circling the village non-stop.  It blows smoke out the stack,  blows its whistle, and generally makes a lot of racket.  He loves it!

And here's my creche that I mentioned in an earlier post.  You can see that Joseph and Mary  have already arrived at the "Inn" -- I figure since it's the 24th they can be there now.

I'll put the baby in the manger before I go to bed tonight so that he'll be there in the morning, and the shepherd will arrive later in the day tomorrow.  The Three Wise Men don't arrive until January 6th, of course.

Yesterday, I did a bit of Christmas baking in anticipation of our family get-together on Sunday.  I figured it would be safe to make the shortbread ahead of time (the rest will wait until the 26th, I want fresh).

Yeh, well, I guess I'm making more shortbread on the 26th too.

God that's good stuff!  Melts in your mouth.  And it's sooooo good with coffee while you read the morning newspapers!

Merry Christmas everyone.