A Southern Kind of White Christmas

Christmas Eve during the day, there just wasn't much going on. I was getting more than a bit worried that the 10 days we're going to be here might last forever! Luckily, Joe and Leighanne had the brilliant idea to grill out hamburgers and 'dogs in the evening. Pat and Linda came out for burgers, but left shortly afterward. Joe made a fire out back and we sat around the fire and had a couple of brews and chatted. Some of the kids made an appearance out there every now and again, but mostly kept busy getting Christmas Eve things ready, like doing cookies and reindeer food. The older girls were doing the cookies and helping the younger ones with the reindeer food. It was a very pleasant way to pass the time. I really miss doing that kind of stuff with them. We don't really have people like that in Cincy yet who like to sit around the firepit and just hang out, watch the kids play and chat. *sigh*

We don't do the santa stuff in our family (Phillip and I), so we were free agents the rest of Christmas Eve, as well as Christmas morning! Unlike those folks that had to stay up late and put a bunch of stuff together! Archie and Morgan get the same amount of stuff that other kids do, I guess...but it's just from us instead of the Man in the Red Suit. That's been kind of a tough part of the Christmas Season for us...it always has been. We get santa shoved down our throats for two months (more, if you remember that retail stores begin putting out Christmas stuff before Halloween!) and sometimes it's tough to not do what everyone else is doing. Not many of the Christmas specials focus on what Christmas is REALLY about, except for the Charlie Brown Christmas. It's all about santa, dancing snowmen, flying reindeer, and more santa. I was trying to find Christmas books in the library in Cincinnati that didn't have any mention of santa, but only found two so far. TONS about santa. So being the homeschoolers we are, I turned it into a bit of a school project to find out where the legend of santa came from. And it was kind of a neat story. As with all legends and stories, the original story gets exaggerated and added to over the years. And surprise...now we have a fat guy in a red suit squeezing down chimneys delivering presents simultaneously to millions of children using reindeer which defy gravity, one of whom has a red glowing nose. The fat guy is now nothing more than a marketing tool used by retailers in order to lure kids into a web of deceit in which their parents can't get out of because 'everyone else' does santa and it's all about the magic of Christmas and you are labeled somewhat of a scrooge if you don't fall into the trap.

Hmmm...perhaps I'll get off my soap box now and continue with what I came here to write about. The frustration has been mounting...I've been needing to get that off my chest for well over a month now!

Christmas Day...ah yes...we didn't have to get up super early, so we slept in and started our day well rested. We had a leisurely morning. I made some biscuits and sugar syrup for breakfast and we went over to Leighanne and Joe's to play with all their toys! They got some really neat stuff, my favourite was the Eyeclops...this telescope-type thing which magnifies whatever you're looking at 200x which shows up on your tv. It was neat looking at skin, hair, fingernails and jewelry. The bottoms of the kids' feet was particularly gross to look at, as the dirt was HUGE on the tv. Coins and dollar bills were neat too. I might have to save my money for one of those. I could see where it would be neat to look at fireflies, flowers, leaves, ants, etc.

After playing with all their stuff, we went to the beach. A different thing to do on Christmas! This is where our white Christmas came from! Here are a couple of pictures:

After the beach, we had dinner with Julie, who lives very close to the beach! We were happy to see the hors d'œuvres because we were STARVING after getting back from the beach! We had a lovely dinner of a pork roast with mashed potatoes (of course) and stuffing. The best part was the pumpkin pie. It was so yummy! Julie was kind enough to give me a pie 'to go' as well! I will serve it when we do Christmas presents with my parents and I will claim credit for it! Thanks, Julie!

After dinner, Julie opened a bottle of her Biltmore wine, of which she poured me a glass and herself a glass. Old E had apparently gotten her some kind of wine preserve type of special cork to go back in the bottle which pumps out the air. This proved to be very difficult to figure out. Here is my uncle Kenny taking a stab at trying to get it to work properly:

Fortunately, between him and Julie they finally got it to work properly so we only drank our one glass and we didn't have to drink the whole bottle of wine that evening. *whew!!* We really dodged a bullet there! :-)