Christmas Eve

Thursday, December 24th
On the day before Christmas, we got up at a leisurely pace. Vivian was content to just hang with her daddy or explore the various kiddie toys I had pre-planted about the downstairs. I'd seeded the family room with curios like Duplos and stacking pegs and shape sorters. Perhaps her favorite items however were the TV and DVD remotes. The challenge of restoring them to their functional configuration would fall to Grandma and Grandpa at the visit's end.

Vivian was not the only one to play. Dan and I played checkers with a wooden set Frank and I had purchased at the Colorado Train Museum in Golden when we visited there the end of August. The red checkers were carved with cabooses and the black checkers were carved with locomotives. Dan beat me. 

Traditionally we'd play with a set of Christmas Checkers where there are 3-D wooden carved green Christmas Trees versus red and white Santa Heads; but that set, with its red and natural maple checkerboard, had somehow not made the trek down from the attic for Christmas 2015. I nabbed the image below from the internet. Maybe if I'd had the more appropriate checkers for the season the outcome might have been different...? One Christmas, when Robin and Dan were younger, I'd bought extra sets of these, one for each of them. I wonder if they still have them after all their moves and life changes.

Some adults, the energetic silly ones, amused themselves by ambushing each other with X-Stream Air guns that launched donut shaped discs or a PowerPopper that shot out bright green foam balls. 

Vivian loved running around picking up the foam balls, and placing them in carrying basket with a handle. A basket we normally use as a dispenser for our paper napkins was pressed into a nobler service on this day, collecting spent ammunition from the PowerPopper.

After collection, Vivian willingly and proudly presented the ammunition spheres to Grandpa, one by one.

I'd forgotten that I'd been saving empty tubes from wrapping paper so we could have cardboard light saber duels, but that is ok. We had plenty to keep us active and happy and busy. Frank picked Alex up mid-afternoon so he could join the fracus. He settled into the newly arranged, no longer carpeted family room, content with his puzzles and banks and videos, nonplussed by the totally rearranged room.

After Vivian's afternoon nap, she went with Dan and Carrie pay a brief visit to some in-town friends of theirs. Later, I accompanied them to the 4:00 pm Children's Christmas Mass at St Michael's Catholic Church. Vivian joined the kids up on the altar for part of it and was well behaved. She got kind of antsy as the sermon lasted too long and became too boring; but then, so did the adults. I surreptitiously took this cell image of her and Carrie from my place in the pew.

After church we gathered with the neighbors in our cul-de-sac to set out and light luminaries. It was a chilly night but the rain stayed away while we socialized and were occupied in our communal task.

Alex was quite the un-doer, trying to pick up each sack and blow out its candle! He loves to blow out candles so this was a fun, field day for him. Vivian was quite the helper. Our neighbors were commenting about how for many of the previous generations of candle lighters – our own kids when young and some of the grandkids, nieces, and nephews of our neighbors – lighting luminaries had been their first experience with striking a match or handling fire close up.

The resulting effect is always beautiful and calming. I love how in this  photo the moon is peeking through the clouds as viewed through the branches of our tree. 

After coming indoors I fried up the Cheese Blintzes I had made the day before. My aging stove-top chose to act up with an intermittently working burner; but by juggling different dials and controls, some pointed blows with a wooden spoon on offensive heating coils, and multiple fry pans, I persevered and no blintz was lost. They crisped up nicely and were delicious with sour cream or applesauce. I was too busy being a cook to be a photographer so you must just imagine how delicious they looked. We polished off all I had made in short order.

After dinner was bath and bedtime. Frank and Dan played a few games of Sequence and kept me company while I stubbornly stayed up knitting Isaiah's stocking. I finished it just at midnight with seconds to spare. I give more detail in my DianeLoves2Quilt post for December 28th. Here are those ten stockings hanging all in a row. 

The day had been quite full of merriment and we still had Christmas to look forward to the next day.