Our Christmas Eve this year was a little different than past years. We have had a tradition of having my parents and my sister and her husband to the house after 4pm Mass for a chicken stew dinner. This year with my parents living on Cape Cod the drive is a bit much back and forth so they did not come. We were joined by Allison’s friend Colleen and her mother, Sue. Colleen and Sue attended Mass as well and just happened to get the pew in front of us. They came back to the house after Mass and we enjoyed the traditional chicken stew that Allison makes.
Mass this year was at Saint Mary’s Church and they have a nativity scene out on the lawn. I always get a photo of the kids by the nativity scene after Mass except for last year when we had to watch Mass on Facebook. I like seeing those Nativity Scene memories come up on Facebook each year, though.
There was also some fresh baked bread that Colleen and Sue brought and this year I picked up a French Silk Pie from Munroe Dairy because it sounded good. It was really very tasty. After dinner we talked in the living room and the family had my read How Murry saved Christmas for everyone. Colleen and Sue had never heard the story before and they enjoyed this silly tale very much. We also got a nice family photo for the year by the tree thanks to Colleen suggesting it.
I almost always for get to do that. It was a very nice evening and Allison and I stayed up for a while preparing the gifts. Luckily Allison had wrapped most of them last night so we weren’t up too late.
Today we continued to get ready for Christmas. Allison put up the rest of the decorations last night and I moved the boxes back to the basement. Eva had her friends over for a Christmas gift exchange and games and lunch and to watch Stranger Things. I picked up pizza for everyone while Allison worked on Cinnamon rolls. I also helped Andy clean his room for a few hours. This consisted of me cleaning and he deciding on what to keep and what to toss. I found 6 water bottles in his room during that cleaning and we still have a long way to go to get the room to halfway useable.
He wasn’t much help because his arm is in a cast now. Allison took him to get his cast this morning and he now has a pink and black striped cast. He picked the colors. We tried to suggest red and green for Christmas but his cast would be staying on beyond Christmas and he thought that wouldn’t make sense. All of Eva’s friends signed Andy’s cast for him. He was excited about that.
The kids finally decorated their mini trees tonight. I had put them out weeks ago and fixed the lights and go them ready to decorate but we had not had the time to do so. Tonight we did. We also watched A Charlie Brown Christmas and the Elf on the Shelf special. Both little shows that the kids enjoy.
Allison wrapped the gifts tonight and we thought that we were going to run out of wrapping paper because we were down to a couple of rolls and what I thought was a third roll turned out to be rolled up Jimmy Buffett concert posters. They were in the wrapping paper caddy because that it he perfect size for rolled up paper. So I ran out to Target and Eva came along with me. We flew through the store to get wrapping paper and a zip up hoodie for Andy. all of his sweatshirts are pull over and that doesn’t work great with the cast.
We also ran into Michael’s to get Andy some clay for Christmas. He wrote a Christmas letter yesterday and that was basically the only thing on the list that he’d be getting from Santa. He wants an Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset that is $300 -$400. Not this year. The big gifts were already decided and ordered months ago. they were not VR headsets. His letter to Santa was very nice, though. He did not ask for much other than the headset. He asked about how Santa was doing and what the elves birthdays were. It was a very cute letter.
