December 26th, 2017

So now Christmas is over for another year.  I hope yours was memorable and a whole lot of fun.  Ours was certainly was.  This was our festive Christmas Eve celebration group.  Joy & her beau, Bob and Tim & I got together again in what is turning out to be a new Christmas Tradition.

​I'm going to take a tiny moment here for a quick question.  How many times does it take of doing essentially the same thing on the same day before it becomes tradition?  Anybody know?

​Anyway, Christmas Eve we had a good, though slightly non-traditional meal, saw a movie, walked in the arboretum to enjoy the lights and then returned home to have dessert and then opened our stocking presents. And we all had a really good time.  What was the best part?  Hmmmm. 

​I was going to say that opening presents is the best part but that's honestly not true.  Maybe every part is the best part.  It was a good meal.  I love to cook and I especially love to cook for a group of people.  I dearly love to bake and would love to bake every day. But my waistline cannot afford that so having people here to enjoy it with us is a great excuse for me to do something I already adore doing.  Baking.  So that maybe is the best part. Oh wait, the movie was really good.  And the Christmas lights at the arboretum is wonderful.  It's at least a little different every time and walking around the entire park marveling at the lights transports me back to being a little girl and driving around whatever town we lived in at the time oogling at the magic that the Christmas lights create is a wonderful thing.  Maybe that's the best part.

​There is no getting around the fact that we save the stockings for last. It is the grand finale and the entire "save the best for last" concept rings true here. But even that isn't the best part.  The best part is what we did the most.  And mostly what we did that night was laugh. We laughed so hard, our faces hurt.  You know you are laughing a lot when it involves nose blowing and mascara smears.  This did.

​But the stockings were pretty awesome. We fill stockings for each other.  Joy and Bob create stockings for Tim and I and vice versa.  And the guys get really involved in this process too. It isn't one of those situations where the ladies do it all and the guys share half credit. Nope.  We all take this very semi-seriously.  I can only get so serious filling a Christmas stocking. It's meant to be fun.  In the photo, Bob is wearing some of what was in his stocking.  Bob gets the whole Christmas stocking idea!  You have to embrace it whole heartedly. He absolutely did.

​You see, a perfect Christmas stocking has a kind of balance to it.  Some the ingredients should be silly, some should be practical, some should be edible and some should be Wow.  The items should come from a variety of different sources.  We found things at craft shows, at the dollar store, at the Brighton store, at the grocery store, a donut shop, a stationary store, a gift shop and lord knows where else.   We started accumulated our Christmas Stocking stash over the summer.    Not every day, not even every week, just here and there as some item struck us as a great idea.

​Our new Christmas tradition kind of evolved on it's own.  It wasn't something we set out to do, it just kind of happened last year.  And we had such a good time, we decided to do it again this year.  I'm not a betting fool, but in this case, I think there is a pretty good chance that we will do it again next year. 

If you enjoyed your Christmas even a fraction as much as we did, you had a pretty darned good holiday!~  

​Happy Day after Christmas to you!