Christmas

 Christmas 2013

 Other than Christmas Eve day, which is the day my family always has Christmas Dinner, our Christmas plans were kinda up in the air.  Back at Thanksgiving my Cousin had mentioned having something at her house on Christmas Day, but then I didn't hear anything else about it. Unless he's already on shift or had scheduled a trade, we generally don't know if John's going to be working Christmas Day or not.
So when my oldest son called to ask our plans so they could make plans with his fiancee's family, we ended up planning a Family Dinner the Sunday before Christmas.

The day was a perfect Christmas-y day. We usually don't get snow for Christmas, so the next best thing is dark, overcast, and rainy. Perfect for lamp light, and the Christmas lights on the mantle and tree glowed so pretty.

For Dinner we cooked a ham, and had potato salad, creamed corn, sweet potato souffle, green bean casserole and cranberry sauce.

D and T opened their gifts, but the rest of us were waiting until Christmas.

Other than her outfit and his sleep shorts and some stocking stuffers, I mostly gave them gift cards and money. They needed money more than more stuff, and I didn't know what kind of stuff to buy them anyway.  Dirt poor as they are, they still seem to have everything they need and then some.

I didn't just give them gift cards and money, I made it interesting, and it went over really well. They got such a kick out of it.  I'll make a separate post about it next.

The next day, John suggests that since he might likely be working on Christmas, maybe we should go ahead and do some gift opening.

We opened some, but I wanted the boys to still have something to open on Christmas even if John wasn't home, and there was still a chance he might be home on Christmas and would have something to open, too. Otherwise, he could open the rest of his the day after.

John had to work Christmas Eve day, and Ryan had to work Christmas Eve night so he slept all day. So it was just me and Kev for the day. We picked up Aunt R and headed to Aunt D's for the day.

There wasn't many of us this year, but to be honest, I think that's probably a good thing. We had a yummy dinner of ham and many sides and lots of delicious desserts.

We don't really do a prescribed gift thing here. Some of us bring some little things for my Cousin's boys and each other if we find or make something we want to give. It's neither a requirement or competition to match or out-gift the other, and I think that's awesome.

Turned out J ended up not having to work on Christmas Day afterall.

We opened the rest of our gifts, he made me cry, we ate leftover ham and sides from Sunday...and that was pretty much the end of Christmas 2013.

Fishing Bobber Floating Cooler, haha, how redneck is that.