­­­Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Mine was wonderful, despite a small setback.  Lots of laughter, good food, way too many presents and my first white Christmas ever. I ended my work week Wednesday night with a double dance program – got to do a minuet that I like but don’t often do because only two men in the group know it and it’s rather seldom that we are scheduled for the same program. My mom asked at Thanksgiving if I would take over the holiday cooking so Thursday I did a bit of baking and prep work for Christmas dinner before my husband and I took off to visit his family. We had a great, if short, visit with his dad’s family and his mom’s family. They thankfully live near each other so we can see almost everyone when we travel out that way. Does usually mean eating two big holiday meals in one day, followed by another the next day with my family, but we get all the families in that way. 

We got home late Friday night and each opened a gift to the other. Hubby got me a pretty creamware reproduction of a 1740s teapot. He got several reproduction 18c stoneware fish-shaped pastry molds. (Yes, we are history nerds…)

Christmas day didn’t quite go as planned. We planned to open our gifts to each other at home, then go over to my parents’ house to spend the day with my parents, brother, sister-in-law and niece, and have dinner with my family and some friends. My body, however, decided that it wanted to conduct a full-body purge starting at 3:00am. There are apparently no urgent care type facilities open 8:30am or so on Christmas day in this area, so we ended up at the hospital. Five hours, three nurses, two IV bags and a couple of doses of anti-nausea meds later, I was yuking my way back home.  Hubby had to cart foodstuffs and gifts over to my parents house while I slept off the all-night “fun” I’d had. Mom ended up doing some of the cooking after all, but my husband and brother pitched in, our friends brought stuff, s-i-l made her bacalao and they ended up having a good meal even if it wasn’t quite what was planned (and I didn't get to attend, much less cook it). I did wake up enough to se the snow falling in the afternoon – first white Christmas ever for me, including the year I was in Switzerland. Snowed most of Sunday, too. We probably shouldn’t have gone, but I was feeling well enough Sunday afternoon that hubby took me to my parents’ house so I could spend time with my family for the holiday.  

So even though Christmas day was a bit rocky, the holiday was fabulous! Hope everyone is enjoying the post holiday glow. Cheers!