REWIND....CHRISTMAS EVE

Every year we rotate hosting our family Christmas Eve dinner and gift exchange and this year it was my brother, Brooks' turn. He and my sister-in-law outdid themselves. Everything was wonderful...so much delicious food....wines and sparkling cider.

It has become a recent tradition for us to have an italian feast and we all bring our favorite entrees--ours is lasagna--Bruce makes a killer pan of lasagna.

This is Balto, the tired party animal at the end of the night, after all the food and gift opening was complete.

CHRISTMAS BLESSINGS

Christmas Day was good.
Very good.
It was a rainy cold Christmas morning--my favorite kind of San Diego Christmas.

I slept in later and we enjoyed our morning coffee in front of a wonderful warm fire (thanks to my thoughtful hubby, Bruce) and we exchanged our goodies filled stockings. We brought our gifts in from under the tree and enjoyed seeing the other open their gifts. Bruce was happily surprised with his Ruger M77 rifle (thank you again Dad!!) and is now looking forward to shopping for a scope and case.

By 2:00 our home was filled with the delicious aromas of Christmas food warming in the oven, and the voices of (most of) our kids and family and friends. More gift opening and laughter and love. We sat down to dinner at around 5:00 and afterwards we all pushed away from the table full and made our way into the living room and kept warm by the fire while we watched some Christmas TV specials. Later we had coffee, cocoa and pie (and candy from the overflowing candy dish on our coffee table).

I am looking forward to seeing my youngest son, T, who is driving down from Oregon today and will spend the week with us. He spent his first week of his leave with his dad for Christmas and will be returning to JAX next weekend. It's going to be so good to spend some time with him! I sure miss that boy!

Today we are sitting around in our jammies, relaxing and have a very quiet day together...ahhhh, so nice.

Oh yeah, I've been scoping out some more ideas and plans for our move...which has been slated now for May 1st. That is the day we plan to roll out of our driveway and head east.

NOT ME MONDAY

This is my first run at Not Me, Monday...If you'd like to see what this is all about and the rules to play this game (and read the Not me dirt on everyone else who is brave enough) then you should run, don't walk over to McKMama's blog (the founder and honest matriarch of Not Me Monday) and enjoy her admissions with your morning coffee or tea or whatever. I won't hold you in suspense any longer.... here are mine:

I did NOT stop at 7-11 on my way out to finish my Christmas shopping and buy chocolate covered Hostess Donettes and a Big Gulp Pepsi for breakfast. Not me, I believe in eating a nutritious breakfast and I would never do something like that.

While Christmas shopping, I was NOT tempted to do some shopping for myself as well. I am much too unselfish to entertain the thought of trying on clothes and snapping up great bargains for me when I am supposed to completing my Christmas shopping.

I did NOT come home from shopping late in the afternoon, make dinner, wrap gifts, watch TV, blog surf on the computer and finally at 11:30 pm, fall into bed without taking a shower! Nope, not me. I always shower every day.

Hope your Monday is a good one!

SHOPPING WRAP UP

I went out today to finish up my Christmas shopping. The traffic was light and overall it went pretty smooth given it was the last weekend day before Christmas.

I was happy that I did not have to spend much time searching for parking places or waiting in long lines. (I suppose that everyone else was either already done or they decided to go to the mountains to play in the snow). But not me. After sprinting around town, in and out of several stores and sliding my debit card a few times, I loaded the loot in the back of the Jeep and headed home.

Tonight we are sipping homemade hot cocoa (milk, cocoa powder, sugar and vanilla extract) topped with whipped cream in front of a nice hot fire in our fireplace.

We finally have wrapped gifts under our tree and it's beginning to feel like Christmas to me.

SCROOGEY....

I promised a report on my shopping excursion yesterday. I was quite surprised that it was not nearly as crazy at the mall as I had imagined it would be. We were able to find parking spots close enough to the mall entrance we chose and our waits in lines were not too awfully bad. We did the "dodge a shopper" dance a few times to avoid a collision with other shoppers, but everyone seemed to be in the holiday spirit and we had a pleasant shopping day. We got most of our shopping completed and were home by mid-afternoon.

However, despite all of this, I am feeling a bit Scroogey and try as I might, I am having a tough time with Christmas this year. I love the whole shopping and gift wrapping, baking, decorating my home events, but this year most of it feels like a chore. And I hate feeling like this.

I'm hoping that by the time the predicted (and promised) winter rainstorm blows in with precipitation and wind and cold temperatures (and snow in our mountains!) and once Bruce and I have completed our traditional drive to see all the Christmas lights in our favorite neighborhoods, that the Scroogey part of me will have been exorcised.

I think I need a Christmas crafty project to help me....I love Christmas crafty projects.