Home(s) for Christmas

So, day two of the Christmas home tour is over. Today was the two-in-one, that is two visits in one day. We started at my house with lunch...at three...and then progressed over to Lauren's for dessert at about 6.

My place is quite small for the 11 of us, but we managed quite nicely in spite of the crowded space. No accidents this time (5 years ago, my brother-in-law nearly burned the place down by knocking a piece of paper into a candle)...

The menu was simple enough, but everyone loved it. I did make and serve the delicious sweet-&-sour meatballs that my sister had a couple of weeks ago at her place. Not a single one was left over! Then I had angel hair pasta parmesan, a tossed salad, baby June peas in butter sauce, rolls, cottage cheese, cider and raspberry ginger ale. I also had pina colada and chocolate covered cashews, sugared pecans, olives, and baby pickles as condiments.

After the meal, we shared our favorite family Christmas traditions. That brought up a lot of lovely memories of times past. When we finished sharing, I showed the first 20 minutes of Rick Steves' two-hour travel feature on Christmas Traditions of Europe. We looked at the ones for England and Norway. One of my favorite things about this program is that he began it by reading the story of Jesus' birth from Matthew. It was illustrated by scores of nativity paintings from all over the world. Great Christmas music played in the background. It was quite inspiring, as well as interesting.

By then, the sun had set so it was time to open presents. I've been picking up presents for the family since this summer. It's one of my greatest joys, finding the right present for each one. I didn't spend a lot of money. That's never the point for me. It's letting each one know I've been thinking of them...and giving them something to recall me to mind whenever they see/use it.

When we finished with the presents, it was time to move on to our next stop. All but my parents left. We stayed behind and cleaned up the kitchen, then went on ourselves. Lauren has the biggest house of the four homes involved, but she does a lot of entertaining for the church and the school, never mind the family. It's nice to be able to spread ourselves out (unlike my place where we're all crowded into one small room for all intents and purposes).

We stayed there until 9 or so, then disbursed to our own homes. We will gather next in Maine at our parents' home. I'm going up early, sometime tomorrow afternoon.