Christmas Eve 2013...the year without a Santa Claus

We got our wish this year!....to host Christmas day diner at our house for friends.  So we spent a big part of our Christmas Eve baking, smoking, and cooking for our feasts for both nights! We were really hoping to take a break and go ski in town but the temperature on the trails was well below zero.  Not a comfortable environment to ski in, especially for Willa.  While she can keep right up with Miles and I on a moderately fast ski now, if we are really hauling ass for a killer workout and training.....or just to keep warm at 10 below, she would be left behind.  But 2000 ft up at our house it was 7 above so we opted for another show shoe across the valley.  Is was nice to get outside in the brisk cold after being in the house steamy hot from cooking all day.  There have been no big winds or warm temps to whisk away the snow from the trees to leave them bare for quite sometime now.  Everything has been covered in either thick snow or hore frost.  And it catches the winter low light colors so beautifully.  Truly a wonderland.  I hope it lasts!  I'm slowly phasing out some of our old Holiday decorations for new updated ones.  I really like a more wintery Scandinavian color scheme.  The soft grey-based arctic blues and purples that one sees outside this time of year.  I really like pagan symbology of the holidays, non-traditional natural Christmas trees, holly and berries, lots of candle light, and majestic reindeer stags-I have a nice collection of stags started....

Our house smelled like HEAVEN from morning to bedtime.  While Miles baked spent-grain bread and pie crusts, I worked on my pie filling, cranberry chutney, and oyster stuffing.  After our snowshoe we got busy with the rest of Christmas eve dinner...king crab, green bean casserole, and mashed taters.  Everything tasted incredible.....IN-CRED-I-BLE.  I actually ate so much I had NO room for pie.  That just does.not.happen.

Every year on Christmas Eve we each get a new pair of jammie bottoms and a family game.  We donned our jammies and heavy coats to take a walk around the neighborhood.  The stars where booming to the north-Saturn big and bright- and I was lamenting the fact that our telescope had been broken years before and now that we have this great new room with huge windows, wouldn't it be awesome to look at the stars from the warm inside?  Foreshadowing!  We followed up our walk with a viewing of Holiday Inn.  DAMN Fred Astaire could DANCE!

 Of course our holidays have been lacking without Dylan, but this was also the first year that we have had no Santa believin' kids in the house.  It was great when Dylan no longer believed(Actually, we had to break the news when she was 11!) because she could then join in the Santa Shenanigans of wrapping and setting up her little sister's presents.  But with Willa no longer believing...that's it.  No more Santa.  SOB!!!!!!!!  A few weeks ago, as Willa and I where decorating the tree, she paused and asked, "Are you Santa?"  Taken aback, I went right into goof mode.  Eyes wide and mouth agape I responded with, "OMG!!!  WHAT are you TALKING about.  Is the Devil in ye, Child?!?!?!?!"  She just looked at me deadpan.  "Mommy....TRUTHFULLY." 
UUUGGHHH!!!!  She played the TRUTH card!!!  I looked to Miles in the kitchen for help...I could see him watching us out of the corner of his eye.  Damn!  DAMN, damn!  "Hunny!  Willa thinks WE'RE Santa!"
"Mommy..........."
Oh, all right....SHIT.  There goes the magic.  The sneaking around late-night, putting Santa prezzies under the tree....the delight the next morning when she wakes up and walks into a candle lit room with soft Christmas music playing.....a pile of new presents under the tree(HOW does Santa get down such a skinny chimney?!)....a rockingchair and stool with cookie crumbs and half full glass of milk on it pulled up by the fire.... 

Damn kids and their "logic".

No Dylan...no Santa...those where tough things to wrastle with this year....but we still had a wonderful, wonderful time.....
And I didn't hesitate to boast, "And, ya know, ALL those presents from Santa were from ME and DADDY!!!  Aren't we the most AWESOME parents?!?!?!?!

A FABULOUS 17 year old cab... we bought 4 after enjoying some on one of our first "fancy" dates!

THANKS, Dad!!!!!

 

Something kinda wonderful:  I had been yearning to hear Handel's Messiah and looked through my dad's collection a couple of times to see if he had it(I had inherited his whole collection of hundreds of classical music CDs that I store in a couple of huge "notebook" disk holders) with no luck.  So on Christmas Eve I researched some highly revered versions of Messiah online and decoded to buy The Academy of Ancient Music-Christopher Hogwood conducting version on iTunes.  When I went to purchase, something kept preventing the sale from going through.  I was feeling pretty irritated at that point!  I was really wanting to hear this version now! It was hard to believe my dad didn't have Messiah in his collection, so I went back downstairs to look one last time.  I picked up the heavy leather CD book, put it on my lap and it fell open right to a Handel's Messiah CD.   Not only was there suddenly a disk right there alphabetically where it should be...but it was THE very same Academy of Ancient Music-Christopher Hogwood version I had just tried to purchase!!!  Crazy!!!!  My arm hairs were on end!  I put the CD in right before dinner....and it was magnificent.  For the first time since my father died, I felt like he was there with us.  A warm, comforting, loving feeling of the highest form of my DAD.

Smeeeeeeeeeeell!!!!!!!!

GLORIOUS EATS!!!!

Sillies!

Fuzzy foxes, celestial white horses, and Star Wars!

 

And to all, a good night.....

Christmas morning 2012

 

 

 

Christmas morning....traditions that have taken root...candles lit, Celtic Christmas music playing, , releasing Willa from the prison of her room, waking Dylan up, wearing cozy new jammie bottoms, checking out what Santa put in our stockings-even the cat's!, taking a break and devouring Miles's homemade cinnamon rolls and coffee, opening prezzies, making the phone calls to family, cleaning ALL that wrapping paper, and heading over the valley to our friend's for Christmas dinner.   This year we got to join Miles on his radio show, Dead or Alive, on 90.3 KNBA!  It was a late night but a lot of fun going on the air and picking out tunes for him to play!

 

D-LISH

 

Christmas zombies!

 

Willa made Miles a race bib holder!  Me next!

A very frisky kitty today!

 

 

The aftermath

Flicks!!!

 

Scotch.  You know it!

 

Getting ready to go on air

 

Dur

 

 

Christmas Eve 2012

We had a warm busy and lovely Christmas Eve.   Miles and I went for a great run in the afternoon...I am full of gratitude that I have been able to run my 4-5 mile route pain free for the last few weeks!  Let's hope I can continue to build back what I had last season.  Our appetites were primed for the feast we spent the rest of the day making....kitchen warm and smelling AMAZING.  Pies, pumpkin poppers, cookies, king crab, mashed taters, white trash green bean casserole, and a 10 year old wine brought up from our "wine cellar" (the crawl space).  It was a treat to FINALLY enjoy our Christmas eve dinner in our new addition!  We've set up our new dinning room in there temporarily until we get the wood floors in....which are now sitting in boxes on our floor waiting to acclimate and be installed.  Thw walls are painted, the tile is in, all we need to do not is put in the lighting, do the wood floor, and furnish it!
We cut down a monster tree from the back yard on my birthday.  It was choking out the trees next to it, so down it came....quite tall and skinny and very asymmetrical!  But decked out in it's Holiday finery it's an attractive and quirky tree.  We love it.  The room felt wonderful and spacious all aglow in candles and Christmas tree lights. 
After that glorious dinner we went for a walk in the dark and snow, goofing around and enjoying warmer temps.  We've had very little snow so far this year and are just coming out of a month of sunny blue skies and below zero temperatures!!!
The only downside to our evening was no Dylan.  In order to have Christmas day off, she had to commit to working on Thanksgiving and Christmas eve.  Such is the life of a working teen paying off a car....  Our fist Xmas eve without her...and that part really, REALLY SUCKED.

Willa making pumpkin poppers

They were SOOOOOOO yummy

A REAL dinning room table!!!

Spin the lazy susan!!!

 

Scenes from Christmas Day

How the day went:  Coffee, of course!....open stockings....more coffee accompanied by Mile's homemade cinnamon rolls....exchange gifts/open Santa prezzies....groove on our new stuff....answer phone calls from relatives....clean up...groove on our new stuff....eat a "real" breaky....go for a snowy run....shower....head out to the T's house for football, fun and dinner...and what a beautiful drive it was!  9 more inches of new snow blanketing everything...a true white Christmas!  .....back home...watch a movie.....goodnight!

Christmas morning!  Crack-o-Dawn!

I am absolutely in LOVE with our tree.  Perfect in so many ways....in that it came from our own yard and in how amazing it looks!

It's like an I Spy book!!!  Who can spy the whiskey?!?!

Willa worked so hard on the little lamb she knit for Dylan!  Every morning on the dark car ride to work she was back there knitting away.  Lamb is napping on the neck warmer I knit for Willa.  Made one for Dylan, too, but it needs some more work....

Willa's wrapping "humor".

The tee Willa made for Daddy using our tutorial HERE.

Willa made this beautiful Ireland scene out of scraps of wood for me!  It goes with the Arctic themed one she made for Miles LAST Christmas.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, too!!!!