Christmas

It's 11 p.m. and the hostess that I am, I've swept and mopped floors and cleaned the kitchen in my house, where three of our guests are staying. It makes me a bad hostess if I wake up my guests - a good hostess in that they'll wake up to a clean house.

Our family Christmas holiday started Christmas day (naturally) with the surprise-to-Katie arriveal of Lucas. The festivities continued with Emily, Enrique, and Kielea's arrival on Sunday, followed by John's arrival on Monday and our official Christmas gathering on Monday night.

It was pretty great, our whole Christmas Day.

Well, great in some ways. Not so much in others.

For one, I overlooked the leg of lamb in the freezer Sunday night so it wasn't really thawed in time for cooking. But cook it anyway we did! And it was ready 4.5 hours later.

Mom had to leave Sunday night to go get John who's truck was still in the shop. And Daniel left at 5:30 Monday morning to retrieve his major gift for Micah, 2.5 hours away.

So it was me in charge of receiving a semi-load of hay (eight 1-ton bales and 640 small bales) at 10 a.m. Monday.

Unloading it was a 4 hour effort that involved many people and lots of help.

In the middle of the hay, I ran up to the house and found out Mom was going to be 2 hours later getting home then she'd planned. So I made an executive chef's decision and we got the turkey and lamb cooking. Actually, Katie stuffed the turkey and was responsible for all things turkey and stuffing related.

Basically, we saved Christmas dinner.

We ate at 6 and gathered excitedly (adorned in ugly Christmas sweaters!) in the living room for gifts.

It was a perfect evening.