Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was very nice this year. We were planning on spending it by ourselves and I'd made a huge dinner (a little too huge), but our good friends Dave and Shauna Vess (who had been by multiple times that day helping both James and I with secret gifts for each other) didn't have much planned for the evening because of all their relatives joining them the next day, so we had them over at the last minute and it was very fun. It was the first time I had ever picked out and cooked a real ham myself, and I have to say it was highly successful. In fact, we all agreed it was about the best ham we'd had, even better than Honeybaked Hams. I don't remember what it was except that it was some kind of shoulder/picnic type roast and it was the very cheapest kind in all the cases they had at Walmart. Talk about a lucky pick!




As you can see, our boys are quite reverent. Ely is one of Henry's best friends. And yes, that is a can of prune juice by their cups. Ely and Henry picked them out on their own from our food storage shelves. Ely did not enjoy his, but Henry, very surprisingly, did and drank the whole thing!

A little storytime following dinner. We read "Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree" most nights leading up to Christmas. It's a tradition from James's family, along with Richard Scarry's "The Animals' Merry Christmas" and we enjoy them throughly. Nothing warms my heart more than hearing James read, "The Little Bear and the Golden Sled" to Henry. (Wesley has no patience for that long of a story. Not yet, anyway.)

Here's our attempt at a Christmas Eve picture by the stockings. Wes would not hold still and smile, that little stinker. So we resorted to other measures.

OK, and here's my big fun thing this year. I saw an idea in a Southern Living cookbook for a Christmas morning brunch and here's my set-up of it the night before, only we called it "Santa's breakfast." In addition to having the table set up, there were lights strewn around the room and a curtain over the doorway so that the kids wouldn't notice it until after presents.

And voila! The powdered-donut Christmas tree. This was so fun to make. The balls are on toothpicks stuck into a styrofoam cone. The ornaments are cranberries. I had a lot of fun embellishing it. I've never made anything like this before. I'm not usually a "presentation" type of person, more like "feed-the-family-and-I'm-done," but this was a fun new project for me.