<p>Well here it is Christmas Eve and I getting ready to follow the rituals of this day. These include the following:</p>
<p>Pick-up Honey Bake ham, Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Cake, and nice single malt scotch</p>
<p>Go to drug store and pet store to buy stocking stuffers. Use to go to Tower records but since they are out of business, I now get the iTunes gift certificates</p>
<p>Go to Smart and Final to buy candles and paper bags for my Luminary display. It looks like this year might have to hold off until New Years Eve for this as a big storm is approaching the Coast. </p>
<p>Check online for Santa at the NORAD website. This year NORAD has teamed up with Google Maps to make it more high tech. I wonder if the map will also tell you where the closest Denny’s is to Santa. </p>
<p>Help wife clean the Spode Christmas china for the one day out of the year that we use it. </p>
<p>Parents come by around 4:00. Offer them their annual glass of Scotch (neet of course). </p>
<p>Have dinner, make some toasts, open a couple of presents. Then the kids (18 & 16) have to go out side to put the carrots on the roof for the reindeer. They will inspect in the morning to make sure that the carrots have been chewed on. </p>
<p>Finish wrapping and then get up real early in the a.m. to put the stockings together. </p>
<p>Yep another Christmas Eve ritual is upon us.</p>
<p>I planned to not have to go out anywhere today until church tonight, but the line at the state store was out the door last night, so I did go at 9 AM today. I am wrapping also.</p>
<p>We have dinner ourselves, have a fire, play games, put baby Jesus in the manger, take a family picture all dressed up in front of the tree, and head off to 10 PM Mass (used to be midnight, but with only one priest to say all the Masses, he decided he needed some sleep.)</p>
<p>At one time, our Christmas Eve ritual included tamales, sushi, egg nog that kept getting spiked with more and more scotch, fruitcake that kept getting spiked with more and more brandy, family members, and several Jewish friends who were bored.</p>
<p>Today I’m at work, and this evening we’re going to midnight mass. Tomorrow we fly up to Milwaukee, so this evening I’ll probably also start packing… and finish Christmas shopping online… and wrap everything… and yell at the cat for drinking out of the Christmas tree stand. Good times, good times.</p>
<p>I ran all my errands this morning (S home on break is still asleep as we speak), did laundry and set the table for tonights dinner.
We attend mass today at 4 and then another family joins us back here at home for our annual Christmas Eve dinner. Which is…take out from the local Chinese resturant.
The guys play cribbage, and we open presents, stuff ourselves with food and dessert, have a few drinks. By 9 p.m. everyone is ready for home and lounge clothes.
We look forward to this every year.</p>
<p>Wake up “early” around 10, help mom prep for our giant Christmas Eve party (75+ relatives), relax and do Christmas-y stuff all afternoon (I like HowStuffWorks Christmas, and occasionally Christmas Vacation since my dad’s name is Clark too), go to Mass with the family around 4 (for 5:00 Mass, which is packed), get ready for family party, drink with the cousins, eat Honey Baked ham and lots of other hors d’oveures, go to bed, play Santa with my sister (not that any of us “believe” any more, but it’s still fun to organize the presents), wake up tomorrow morning, open presents, make breakfast, watch movies, go to Grandma’s for dinner (this is always a disaster), then go out partying with my friends.</p>
<p>We always open at least one gift each on xmas eve. We usually aim for the board games so we can play together. And we order pizza and watch some classic xmas movie together. </p>
<p>And we still leave cookies, milk and carrots for Santa and his reindeer.</p>
<p>We usually have dinner at my mom’s with the extended family, followed by church attendance and then return to mom’s for cookie swap, hot chocolate and present opening. Unfortunately, this year I’m working, mom isn’t well and the extended family will be elsewhere, so it will be just another night of commuting. I am, however, incredibly grateful that I have a job and have my mother with us. We can hope for next year.</p>
<p>The way I see it is the vast majority of the population is not working. They are all out on the roads driving around creating traffic jams so that when I get out of work and try to drive home it will take forever. By the time I finally get home, I’ll be tired and ready for bed. Ho Ho Ho</p>
<p>We are having company from out of town for supper so we will be 11 at the table. I got anxious, as usual, about not having enough food so I just made a HUGE party size Lasagna. My daughter, seeing me put the final sprinkles of parmesan cheese on top remarked to me that they serve lasagna that size in her sorority house for supper. Boy am I am going to have leftovers!
Tomorrow is we will do our family tradition…a matinee movie followed by dinner at a Chinese restaurant.</p>
<p>We picked up our So. Md. stuffed ham like we do every Xmas eve. Tonight we’ll go to church then go for a short drive to look at Christmas lights. Should be home by 9 or so. I’ll probably watch some of the Hawaii-Notre Dame game when we get home.</p>
<p>We always have appetizer dinner in the living room. Years ago, we found that everyone was reluctant to leave the LR after having appetizers in front of the fire to go to the DR for dinner, so we started just having lots of appetizers for dinner. </p>
<p>Then we decorate the tree and my husband reads “The Night Before Christmas.” Then I spend half the night wrapping and filling stockings (and eating too many Hershey’s kisses) while everyone else sleeps. In the morning, we open stockings, have a nice breakfast, open presents one by one. This usually takes us until 11 or 12. Tomorrow we have friends coming for dinner (7 people plus 4 of us) - our guest are Jewish, friends of 30 years standing who spent Christmas with us every year when we were in Boston until we moved to NY 14 years ago; they moved to NJ this year so we are reviving the tradition. They are also excellent cooks so my dinner chores are lighter.</p>
<p>Always the NORAD website, and I have to chew on the carrots (which I don’t care for) and Santa’s cookies (much preferable to the carrots). We have a group of 20 for the Christmas Eve party - ought to be fun with the girls home from college!</p>
<p>This Christmas Eve is much like all of the ones that went before. We are wrapping presents and decorating the tree. NYMOM, I thought we were the only ones left that decorated it on Christmas eve Baking the last batches of cookies and the black walnut cake. Preparing the breakfast strata for tomorrow. . </p>
<p>DD sings solos for 2 of the 3 church services. We go to the 11 PM candlelight one. After the service is over at midnight, drive around the lights and then home to fill stockings. It is getting harder to do now that they are older and stay up late. They can outlast me now. I think stockings are retiring after this year. Small dinner on Christmas this year, since S1 and S2 and my Mom can’t be here and S3 has to work Christmas dinner time. Christmas is so much quieter now that everyone is grown. </p>
<p>Wishing all of the best for everyone. Merry Christmas.</p>
<p>Stuffed ourselves on tamales. Stuffed the stockings with little presents from each other. Stuffed the hot tub with too many middle-aged folks. Couldn’t reach “The Night Before Christmas” since the tree is stuffed in front of the bookcase so we just all recited random lines and mixed it all up. It worked…</p>
<p>We lie underneath the tree just before we go to sleep and we read two books: “Night Before Christmas,” illustrated by Jan Brett, and “Polar Express.” That began way back before D could read, and now that she’s in college, I read one to her and she reads one to me. It’s so important to her that last year when she was out with her peeps on Xmas eve, she was certain to come home before my bedtime (MUCH earlier than hers!) to read with me.</p>
<p>We had our traditional mid-afternoon Mexican meal on Christmas Eve: carnitas, sopa d’arroz, black beans, corn with rajas (I found red-ripe jalapenos, and they were delicious), tortillas, etc. Church at seven, followed by mugs of sweet potato soup and our traditional Christmas Eve dessert of angel food cake with mixed berry sauce and whipped cream.</p>
<p>We haven’t yet had our fill of good Mexican food, so today I’m turning some of yesterday’s turkey into mole, and reading about some of you enjoying tamales has made me <em>almost</em> ambitious enough to make a batch…I just might do it!</p>
Baking the last batches of cookies and the black walnut cake. Preparing the breakfast strata for tomorrow. . </p>