Well, another Christmas has come and gone.  It’s late and the last of the family and friends have headed home.  The day started early with my better-hale preparing some of her family traditions for Christmas morning.  She makes a batch of cinnamon buns covered with lots of sugary icing.  That and a large cup of hot coffee will definitely get your heart started.  The grandson and his mom and dad arrived in late morning requiring the platter of shrimp to be unveiled and devoured.  We all gathered in the living room around the tree for a time  chit-chatting about this and that.  It was obvious to me that everyone was just going through the motions until they could dig into the pile and open their gifts.

“The Aftermath”

As you can see an hour later and the room looked like Santa had shown up and then exploded.  It took almost as long to clean up the debris as it did shopping to buy the stuff in the first place.  The cat and grandson had a great time rummaging through the piles of wrapping paper and boxes seemingly more interested in that stuff than the gifts themselves.  Kids!!!!  Cats!!!!

Another hour has passed and everyone appears thrilled with their gifts so we snack a little more waiting for the next group to arrive.  Our two visitors from northern Maine have finally arrived with tales of the previous day’s ice storm and the fact that most people up north are without electricity.  It’s one of the hazards of living in Maine and those storms can be brutal.  The last time we had one here we were without power for almost a week and a half.  It’s difficult to sleep in a cold bed wearing a parka, gloves, and a tassel hat. It’s hard but we did it.  The pictures taken during that storm are locked away where no one can seem them.  We looked god awful.

After our new visitors had a beer and a few snacks the bowling tournament on the X-box began.  I was able to avoid all of that because of my leg injury so I was the official photographer.  Everyone had a ball with my better-half taking home the winners trophy.

Then it was my turn to cook and to fed the hoard with a decent meal.  A honey-baked ham, rice, Brussels sprouts, and corn took care of everyone’s hunger pangs.  It was followed later by delicious apple and pumpkin pies.  Then after digesting for a while it was back to the X-box for a few rounds of darts which I also avoided by using “cleaning up the kitchen” as my excuse.

After loading up the cars they were off for the night leaving us at least two days of clean up.  All in all a successful holiday gathering with a fun group of people.  The better-half is scheduled for work at 5:00am and her son is flying out at 9:00am.  Unfortunately none of us will be getting enough sleep tonight and we should be zombies all day tomorrow.

I hope your day was as enjoyable as ours.  Merry Christmas!