Christmas Day

I remember my mom making me wait until after everyone had eaten breakfast before we could open our gifts. I can understand why (well, now I can understand why) because the extended family would come to our house for Christmas. There were quite a few adults, my sister and me. The adults outnumbered the kids, so we ate first. And the tree was always packed full of presents. It took us a while to distribute, open, admire, and "ooh and ahhh" over the gifts. It was a long morning.

But at my house, it's mostly just the kids opening gifts. Just the four of us. A few gifts for each. We hand out a gift, open it, and move to the next one. Gifts come before breakfast here! And this year the kids slept until about 7:30. We were in the living room by 8:00. That's my kind of morning!

Since we start late, we eat two meals on Christmas day. We fix a large breakfast after the gifts have been opened and then a big dinner later that day. In the past, I have fixed Grandma's tea ring or cinnamon rolls or monkey bread for brunch. Since we traveled the whole weekend before Christmas, I didn't have the time or the energy to make Grandma's tea ring. The kids were only slightly disappointed. I may fix it later this week. We had cinnamon rolls at my sister's house and Nana fixed monkey bread.... so we had pancakes for brunch this year. The kids had chocolate chip and the adults had blueberry. A side of bacon and eggs completed the meal.

The photo word of the day for December 25th was "lunchtime." I completely missed taking a photo of lunchtime because we didn't really have "lunch." I think I was watching a movie and eating an apple around that time today. Or that could have been when we were playing Apples to Apples. Or I may have been writing a blog post. It's so relaxed, and we don't really watch the clock, so I'm not for sure what we were doing. So... for today's photo, here is dinnertime.

We set the table with the china and used real napkins. We smoked a chicken, fixed a few sides, and some rolls for dinner that evening. We ate fairly early (around 5:30) and then had fondue for dessert. I melted chocolate chips, added some whipping cream and a little chocolate syrup. Yum!

We watched "A Christmas Story" (one of my favorite Christmas movies) and then called it an evening. It was a great Christmas Day together with the family. I hope you made some wonderful memories with your family this Christmas, too.