It's Time to Celebrate

The morning of Christmas Eve has arrived and the boys were up early again! I had to make the jello salad and the cherry cheesecake early enough to chill for the dinner this afternoon while they were eating breakfast, so I started that right after I showered and dressed this morning.

We spent the afternoon at mom's for a dinner and the little kids did a gift exchange. We had 19 there for dinner, including all 10 of Mom's grandkids. Mom topped off the day by giving herself a gash on her finger as she was getting the meat off of the turkey after dinner. Joe had just sharpened the knife when he did the carving before dinner.

We made our gift deliveries before and after going to Mom's and we didn't get home until well after dark. The boys didn't get to their cookie or countdown surprise until after nine p.m. The surprise was Jan Brett's The Night Before Christmas, of course. This version has many wonderful surprises in the pictures on the sides of each page.

Deer Sightings

There was not a lot accomplished today. The tree has been up in the stand since we picked it up Wednesday evening, and Joe keeps asking when is it going to be decorated, but I told him it would have to be when everyone was around to help or at least watch. It really looks good and smells so good even without trimming. Martha Stewart says that you need to pick up your tree and decorate it during the third week of December, so I know I am ahead of her game. She does suggest that you decorate during the second week.

Trying to keep caught up with work has been a much more difficult challenge. There is always something on the list to do, and there is never a time when it is all caught up. I have two parent meetings next week and a couple of deadlines for testing that I need to prepare for as soon as possible. I think I can. I think I can. Well it is not going to all get caught up this weekend as I didn't even put a dent in any of my work tasks today.

Joe's deer hunting has finally proved successful as we now have a deer hanging in the shed waiting for processing. He still has another tag, so will continue going out until he gets it filled or the season runs out.

Today's countdown surprise was the book, "The Wild Christmas Reindeer", by Jan Brett. She has some other favorites for this time of year such as "The Mitten", "The Hat", "Gingerbread Baby", "Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve", "The Trouble with Trolls", "Christmas Trolls", "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and "The Night Before Christmas". She also has a Christmas Treasury with many of these stories in it. My kids spend a long time looking at the details of her illustrations on each page of each story book. Her latest books are "The Three Snow Bears" and "Gingerbread Friends".