G'day, folks. Merry Christmas!
Linda, have a peaceful, relaxed day. I'm glad you will be safe at home, not trying to travel in so much snow and ice.
TM, good on Duckie for waiting. It's so difficult at Christmas. For us in Australia, we used to have to wait until sunrise. But it's summer here, so sunrise is early!
Rabbit, you will have to have my nap for me. I didn't get to have one, although I felt the need badly.
Sharon/LDM, how come your kids are sleeping in on Christmas Day? How did you manage that? Valium in their cocoa last night? Happy birthday for Monday! That was father in law's birthday too.
Sharon/WO, enjoy your day. I hope difficult child hasn't been up to anything too damaging.
It's been an easygoing Christmas Day here for us. easy child & SIL1 arrived last night in time to have dinner with us, then headed down to mother in law's place to stay overnight. They chose to not come to church this morning (a fairly sound choice, given that the usual couple were presenting the servicve and frankly, they need to take a break).
We then headed back to mother in law's place, dropped her home, then back to load up with supplies.
Weather-wise it was hot at church and after we got home. mother in law put the air conditioning on. But within an hour or so the orecast cold winds arrived and it even began to rain a little. We've had a general mild dampness about the day with these cold winds. I say "cold" but it's currently 19 C here, heading for midnight. That's 66 F. A cool night for us, considering it's summer.
We had a relaxed casual lunch (my home-made sausage rolls, a favourite, pre-cooked yesterday and reheated today). We handed out presents slowly. In our family we hand them out one at a time, the youngest capable person gets the job of handing each gift out. We wait until it has been opened then hand out another. It can take hours but meanwhile we're snacking. This year I made sure that what we had to snack on was fairly healthy stuff - nuts, tzaziki, carrot sticks, fresh fruit. And sausage rolls, of course! So in fact we were snacking on lunch.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 & SIL2 arrived earlier than expected, they slipped in at the end of lunch so we fed them and kept opening gifts. Then difficult child 1 & daughter in law arrived, very early indeed. We hadn't expected them before evening but they got to mother in law's by mid afternoon.
This year our Christmas dinner was the evennig meal, because that was when we knew everyone would be there. Again we made it easy on ourselves by not cooking loads of food all at once. I had leftover roast chicken (from dinner last night), a pork roast which we cooked fresh and everything else was something we had prepared earlier in small quantities. And we had plenty. There were small amounts left on plates, enough to indicate that people were not short of food but not so much that we couldn't find someone able to clean up the plate. So no leftovers. Well, not like we usually have, anyway.
We've been playing Wii games alternating with watching movies. Tomorrow is another public holiday in Australia (Boxing Day) and again the stores will be mostly closed. The Sydney to Hobart yacht race begins at about midday, we always watch the start on TV then go to the headland an hour later to see the first yachts sail past.
mother in law has a houseful tonight. so do we. easy child 2/difficult child 2 & SIL2 asked especially to stay at our place because the spare room here has a tin roof and they love the sound of the rain on a tin roof, they find it soothing. I'm so tired, it's been busy today, but pleasant.
I hope you all enjoy your Christmas Day, stay safe and unstressed.
Marg