Less Hustle More Coffee

I took a pic of the tree before our guests arrived on Christmas Eve. The table was set and candles aglow!

Aunt Martha, Uncle Ken, and Mom arrived around 1:30 or so. Packages came thru the door miraculously as did TWO other fur babies.

Let me tell you. Roger perked up and his tail wagged like I’ve not seen in a while. It did little Roger some good to be around Fancy (Mom’s dog) and Coco (Aunt Martha’s dog). It thrilled my heart to see him so happy. Little Bit even came in to greet everyone. But Roger was NOT having THAT! Roger ran Little Bit out of the room at some point yesterday evening saying “enough is enough of you”. Roger is scared of Little Bit outside on Little Bits turf.

The family enjoyed watching the old Christmas movies that were in black and white. I totally forgot to take a pic of the snack table when everyone arrived (with the snacks on it). I got a pick after it was cleared, lol. George’s cooking was awesome. The prime rib came out a little rare and had to be put back in. Poor George hard to satisfy everyone all at once – everyone’s taste ranging from well done to rare. Maybe prime rib was not the perfect choice for this group, and next time we should pick ham or something different for Christmas Eve. ha. It was a little chaotic there for a few moments as everyone was ready to eat but George’s prime rib was cooked, just like HE would have liked it. He suggested microwaving for each person to their desired heat. I’m not fond of microwaved meat as it gets leathery. And our microwave doesn’t work properly as you have to keep buttons to beg it to work. I detest the thing. It was taking forever so we put it back in the stove. Yeah, I’m thinking prime rib is maybe not the thing for us to do again on Christmas Eve. Maybe lasagna next year? lol

We munched on salad while waiting and it didn’t take long.

Once it was in the oven and back out again, we were able to eat and it was wonderful.

We missed these two, but they were back home having their own little celebration. Too close to due date to travel this far!

Everyone comfy. Mom brought her own blanket as she thinks our house is cold. I also had blankets ready for all! lol. We keep it anywhere from 70 to 72. I thought the house was pretty toasty and warm myself.

George’s cooking was mahvalous! We had dessert too. Not pictured. And I had set the table, did all the decor, and cleared the table and washed the dishes and reset the table for Christmas morning.

I like to have a little bit different setting and centerpiece for each meal.

Roger did pretty good sleeping Christmas Eve until about 3:30. George got up with him initially and I got up and let him go back to bed. Mom slept in the recliner in the den. (We offered to give up our bed, but she wanted the recliner, saying she sleeps good in it). It is pretty comfortable.

It seemed like forever, til the others got up and had coffee and we could open gifts. Mom and I were ready. The sun also took forever to come up – the perils of getting up at 3:30, lol.

I thought the room looked pretty in the dark with the sparkles. A bit of light coming from behind me in the kitchen, gave a glow on the table. Such a warm and cozy feeling getting up on Christmas morn.

I whispered to Mom a secret that made her laugh. I said “Momma, guess what?”, as I went into the living room and set stuff about. She said “what?” I said, “don’t tell anybody but Santa is really a woman!”. LOL LOL

I noticed that Santa had not come for me yet. But I guess Santa had to get caught up on his sleep and get a cup of coffee first. Then he must have put his finger to his nose, come down the chimney and past me and set it out and then out with the morning deer (reindeer) because my stocking magically appeared with all the others. George must have been a good boy this year! His cup and his stocking overfloweth.

Taking pics while handing out. Where’s Uncle Ken’s gifts? Probably still under the tree. And most of the morning we had the fireplace going on the TV. Everyone said how warm it made the room. It does have that mental impact! We had the fireplace going until my SIL texted and said Channel 5 had news coverage of the Nashville Bombing. I had seen an alert on my phone about an explosion. So we turned on Channel 5 for the coverage after breakfast. Apparently there an RV parked on 2nd Avenue and issued warning for people to evacuate. How nice to give a warning, but wait, bombing on AT&T is not nice! The guilty party (parties) evidently going after communication. It did do some damage to about 40+ businesses but I think it probably didn’t do the damage it had hoped to do to AT&T. Those of us with AT&T’s phone service went down shortly thereafter. We still have some service, just can’t call. So not really impacted too badly. I don’t like to talk on the phone anyway. lol. But I would have made a couple of calls to talk to Katy but it’s ok we just texted for now and we’ll catch up later.

I had sweets and cookies prepackaged sitting about but NONE of us were really hungry for that. We had a LOT of food and desserts.

I had made a sausage and egg casserole with red and green pepper (Pillsbury crescent dough bottom). IF I had to do it over again, I think I’d suggest we do a country ham, sausage, bacon breakfast with grits and eggs and biscuits and jelly and red eye gravy. I know this group would have loved their biscuits and preserves. I was thinking casserole was easy and it was, but it didn’t seem as special somehow.

Ever since watching “Somebody Feed Phil”, George has wanted a Tagine to cook Moroccan food. He was very happy with it. I also got a Moroccan clay pot tagine cookbook, some moroccan spices, a diffuser burner to help diffuse the heat when changing surfaces from oven to stove top, etc.

We had a great time and everyone left after noon. I had dessert for lunch – fudge silk pie and ice cream. lol After they left I was exhausted and needed sleep. So I went and took a long two hour nap. It was wonderful. I’m not a big nap person, but I knew I’d feel miserable if I didn’t catch up on some sleep, having got up at 3:30 or 4 for many days in a row. I slept and felt better when I woke up but was disoriented a bit. It took me a minute to realize I’d taken a nap and it wasn’t morning. lol I really was exhausted and it appeared I still was. I got up and I think I fixed more coffee at that point but I’d had so much coffee I was about tired of it. I had some iced tea too and that was good.

I didn’t want to watch any more about the bombing. It was Christmas day and we’d seen enough, and I’m not one to let outsiders spoil our day. Awful it was, but sorry, it’s Christmas. So I went about my day as if it hadn’t happened. That is not cruel by the way – that is sanity. Sometimes you have turn the news off and tune the evil world out. Even God tells us to think upon good things. And that is what I did.

We enjoyed our evening. I was pretty much parked and played my game and was on ipad and phone, watched shows, and George read and was on the computer. WE enjoyed doing things we enjoy doing. And then we congregated – just the two of us, lol – for prime rib and left overs. I thought it was about 6:30 and I looked and it was 8:30 already. So not long after, I went back to sleep. And I might have gotten some porcupine pajamas for Christmas! That shower and change from one set of PJ’s to the other felt good.

My gifts are stacked in the living room. I will lay them out and take pics as I do always each year.

Today I’ll be doing laundry, playing with my gifts, putting up the Christmas China, and will order my Chair and Ottoman for my office. Mom gave me Christmas money and that’s what I’m buying with that. I didn’t get the back up drive or alternate drive as George said he wanted me to pick it out and we never did. So I will have to order that myself. I had been waiting on Christmas for it to do a back up on the mac, thinking he was wrapping it up. But I will order what I’ve been looking at. I will need the back up drive that will be dedicated for backing up the mac and then I need another external drive to park the imovies/videos on so they don’t take up so much space and make the Mac slow.

But I love all my gifts. George got the coveted wide angle lens and I’ll be enjoying that VERY SOON! Soon I’ll get to start working on the next video – maybe even this weekend if I get a lot of other things done! I will share my goodies with you tomorrow once I get them all laid out. Right now they are still in the living room in sacks and boxes.

Christmas with our family was wonderful. It’s always good to see everyone and have Christmas together. And we’ll get to see our daughter soon enough, Lord willing!

So Wow! We all worked hard for that and then it’s over! So now we focus on the next few things! We gotta look forward to something always to keep living!

So here is what my things are, not in order of any particular importance but as I get to work on them or as they happen.

• Ordering my Office Chair, Ottoman, and little table so I have a little journaling place and a place to watch TV on my Mac. Have to figure out where the current stuff will go that sits in that corner.
• Ordering on Amazon: a ring light for filming, and a watch band for my Apple Watch
• Packing for Texas, going to Texas and meeting our grandson!!!!!
• Planning my upcoming videos and working on them.
• Planning and Scheduling my Learning Curve Excursions (lol) for camera, YouTube, marketing, and so forth. I’ll have to schedule it to get it done.
• Reading. I’ve decided to read more, somehow. George gave me some books for Christmas too. I already have a bunch to read.
• Looking forward to New Year’s.
• Looking forward to my birthday dinner.
• Looking forward to going through my presents again today.
• Looking forward to doing a Bible Study but I’ve not exactly decided what it is going to be. I think it will be self directed, researched fashion by subject, and maybe even take notes all the way through and could turn into more – we’ll see what God plans/allows.
• Picking out our flooring and getting that. It has seemed so far away – kinda like my Grandson, but now both are getting close.
• May think about another dog at some point – but after the flooring and likely toward spring or even summer. I just don’t know. But it’s in the back of my head.
• Spring- Summer – Soon I’ll begin to look forward to that.
• Getting a pedi and a mani (separate trips) after Texas
• Might get a hair cut after Texas- not sure.

That’s a lot to look forward to so I’m blessed!

I have way more to do than I could possibly fit into my evenings and weekends. ha. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! How did your Christmas go? Did it snow? Did you have any surprises? And cool gifts you wanted? Ya’ll take care! Gone to heat up something for breakfast! More tomorrow!