Merry Christmas!

I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!!

Christmas this year in our household is going to be pretty good afterall. At least that's what I keep reminding myself ... like when the kids won't do what I ask/beg/tell/demand them to do to help out around here...

We have a couple of sick cats with some sort of intestinal worm or something .. I won't go into the gory details, but I have been trying to keep them outside, but when it gets below freezing outside at night, it's not so easy to hear them meowing pitifully to come in. But my house smells like an outhouse because of these two. I've not had the chance or the ability really to clean up as much as I'd like. When I fell down my stairs and broke my tailbone last weekend, it's made it very difficult to do any cleaning. I have to sit all day at work which is nearly unbearable, and getting out of the chair is painful and doing any bending hurts like the dickens... so cleaning up after 2 sicks cats is not really something I can do easily. And forget about asking the kids to do it. I kept the cats in the main bathroom a couple nights when it was really cold out, and they trashed it. The kids refuse to use it or clean it. They say since I put the cats in there I should clean it up, even though they know I am injured. They don't think about the cats freezing to death outside (They are indoor cats 90% of the time and don't have a real winter coat). I wonder if they even care.

So, anyway here it is, Christmas Eve. I have very sketchy plans for dinner tonight and tomorrow. I just know we're having sweet hickory pork loins tonight and a turkey tomorrow (I won one in a giveaway!). I have a can of cranberry sauce and a couple boxes of stove top, and some canned veggies. It's weird how meticulous I was in planning Thanksgiving dinner and cooking things each night that week to make sure it was all ready on Thanksgiving day, but here it is Christmas Eve and I'm just hoping there's enough stuff to make for sides. I don't even think I have enough good potatoes to make mashed potatoes. Eh, hubby will have to do the real cooking anyway, poor guy. He'll figure something out.

I am currently at work, it's kind of slow right now, so I can post this. I'm so tired. I had taken the two youngest shopping for their grandma and dad last evening and then came home, made a very late dinner and wrapped gifts. I was really slow going after sitting all day and then having to drive and walk around the store, so I didn't feel up to baking or cooking ahead. At midnight I had to go get hubby from work. So I was dawg tired and got to bed late. SO this morning I hit the snooze over and over and barely got to work on time. So no baking or cooking done this morning either. Now I won't get off til 7:15pm (on Christmas Eve). Thankfully hubby gets off at 5pm today. I just called him to ask him to get eggs on his way home, and he's in a really good mood. He only has 2 hours left to work, and got some gift cards from his employees and his boss. (I promised him, he could make it up to them and get them New Year's gifts since we'll have money next weekend.)
He's off work tomorrow thank goodness!!! (I still have to work 10:45am-7:15pm tomorrow)

I have always celebrated Christmas on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I was born much later than my siblings, so I still lived at home when my brother and sister had their own families, so the family gathering was at my house (Mom's) as I was growing up, and we'd have it on Christmas Eve. Then the next morning, I'd find gifts from Santa under the tree and go thru my stocking. Then we'd drive a 1/4 mile down the dirt road to Granny's house and have Christmas dinner with her and my aunts and uncles and my cousin Jimmy. Jimmy and I were a couple months apart and always brought our favorite toy with us to play with. We'd exchange gifts there too, but I remember mine always being lame. It was really just all about the food and showing off the cool stuff we'd gotten from Santa.

So, now... my family now consists of my sister and her family, and my brother and his family, both of whom live in my home town, an hour away. We seem to be completely incapable of getting together all at once around the holiday. We (well my family and my brother's) used to always gather on Christmas Eve at Mom's, til she passed on, and then it moved to my sister's house. But she'd been gone for 30 years before her hubby retired from the AF and moved back to my hometown... so they had their own traditions and didn't really like to host the gathering on Christmas Eve as it interfered with her plans... So it changed, so some day around Christmas we'd gather at her coffee shop since it was bigger than her living room and kitchen at home, and have a dinner and white elephant exchange. Til this year... Now we seem to not be able to get everyone together. So, we're hoping to get together in January. I'm ok with that since it means I can get better gifts for the exchange at the after-Christmas sales with the next paycheck. ... so now we have Christmas Eve and Day to ourselves. Since I was used to having Christmas on the Eve, I decided we would start doing that here as well, and then the Day would be for Santa and any of hubby's family that came over, and we'd have a semi big dinner both the Eve and Day.
Well, apparently Corina's fiance's family also celebrates on Christmas Eve, and she said she will attend theirs and not ours if I make her choose.... So, now we must wait til she gets home before we can exchange gifts. But I will not wait for her to eat dinner. She figures she'll be here by 8:30 or 9pm. Sigh. I've already changed traditions to let her spend early Thanksgiving with his family, I am NOT changing my Christmas traditions because of his family's. The problem is, she swears we never used to open gifts on the Eve, so I was just making this a "new" tradition and I should change it. The truth is, since we always went to Mom's it was always kind of confusing when we'd open gifts here. I never wanted our gifts to compete with Santa, but waiting til hubby's mom came over sometimes meant not opening gifts til 1-2pm which also felt wrong. So I guess she has nothing but memories of us chaotically trying to figure out the best time for us to open our family gifts. Fine, whatever. I can create the tradition for the rest of my girls. I made all my first-time-parent mistakes with my oldest, so she's doomed to be scarred for life anyway LOL.

It just does NOT feel like Christmas. maybe I need music... I hope you're all having a great holiday!!

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