Less Than A Week Till Christmas!! EEK!

Hey Ya'll,

Well, it is now less than a week away from Christmas.  Is everyone finished with their shopping?  Well, we are going really lite on Christmas this year as DH's hours & pay was cut at work.  So we are adjusting to the lower income by not spending much this Season.  However, we did purchase everything that we are going to purchase.  Of course, getting them wrapped is another thing totally!!  I always wait until the last minute to get them wrapped.  Not that I want to, it just happens this way every year!  LOL

For as long as I can remember, my family always opened our Christmas presents on Christmas Eve.  The reason for this, was that on Christmas Day, our family always opened the house to family & friends.  In the earlier days when we lived in Southern Calif, Christmas Day was held at my Grand Parents house, & they always invited members of their Church to stop by as well as our huge extended family!!

Meaning that my Grand Parents, my immediate family, my Dad's 2 Sister's & their families, PLUS, my Mom's family (at least some of them) would come over as well & she had 7 Brother's & a Sister, plus their families.  So it was not unheard of for 80 people or more to show up at some point during the day for food.

Because of this, we always opened our Christmas presents on Christmas Eve after eating dinner together.  We opened them (my Dad's side of the family at any rate) together as a family.  And that in itself would be a minimum of 7 adults & 8 of us children!  Talk about paper all over the place!  But they always held out a few gifts for us to open on Christmas morning from Santa.  That way we didn't have to deal with the mess of the gifts as well as the all day long food fest!!  This continued most of my life, & we have just continued the tradition of opening presents the night before, even though we don't have the same reasons for it now, since we moved to the Northern Calif area away from the majority of the family.

Another thing that has changed in the last few years is not eating Christmas dinner together on Christmas day (although we still do try to get together if possible).  We always hold the Christmas Eve dinner at our house, & some years we have the huge traditional Christmas dinner (Turkey, Ham, etc, etc, etc) & others we do something non traditional.  This year is going to be a non traditional dinner.  We are going to make Enchilada Pies (a family favorite) as our main dish.

My Daughter Christa is going to make a fantastic pot of Baked Beans from a recipe that we had to twist the arm of one of our Cousin's back in Arkansas for.  As well as my favorite German Chocolate Cake (from scratch).  I took over the making of it after it got too hard for my Grand Mother to make, & now my Daughter Christa has started to make it & she does a fantastic job I might add!!

Then everyone else (probably about 20 of us), will either bring another side dish or a dessert.   My Sister-In-Law always brings her home made Brownies!!  They never last either!  So that is what my Christmas Eve will be like.  Then Christmas Day, I basically crash, then start cleaning up the kitchen from whatever mess we didn't clean from the night before.  Whew!!

Tonight I finished working on my tax preparation for the day at 9 pm, so my DH & I went for a walk around the neighborhood.  We hadn't walked since the night we did the 2 mile walk & my foot flared up.  So we decided to take a shorter walk to get back into it.  We ended up walking a half mile tonight.  My foot didn't hurt, so I guess I am good to go again!!  Well, I guess I will go for now, I will leave you with a few photos that I took on our walk.

These people really like lights!  If you blow up the photo, you will see the Ferris Wheel.  It was actually a functioning Ferris Wheel.

And this is the house to the right of the 1st photo.

I thought they had a nice flow between lights & Decorations.

And last but not least is our pathetic barely lit house!!  Those are the lights that I put up that may have caused me problems!  I am still hoping that my port isn't flipped.  I will know a week from Monday on the 28th. 

Also, remember that I told you my DH removed all the grass & almost all the bushes & trees as he wanted to re-landscape the yard?  Well, he got it to the point where he started shaping the future landscape then Fall/Winter hit us, so it won't be completed until Spring!  So we have a lot of dirt!!!!  Oh yea, the neighbors just love us.

Well, I will go for now.  Till next time.

Aloha My Friends

Happy Holidays