It has been a rather whirlwind sort of day. We got up early and had cheese blintzes for breakfast, and then climbed into the car and headed off to Napa to see the nephews in their Christmas pageant. It’s a longer drive, now that we’re in Sacramento, but luckily there was no traffic to speak of, so we made it with time to track down bathrooms and then find a good seat in the sanctuary.

The pageant was very cute and rather well done, for a group of little kids. The oldest nephew was Joseph (second year in a row, he told us proudly), and the younger was one of the shepherds, and got to have one of the best lines of the pageant: “Great jumping polecats, it’s an alien!”. Lots of laughter and singing and quite fun.

Then it was off to lunch with the whole family, where my sisters and my mom and I all sat on one end of the table and ate an entire plate of onion rings between the four of us. Yum. My parents headed back home for their own Christmas church rehearsals, and we stayed behind in Napa, going back to my older sister’s house. First, however, there was a detour through Target, to pick up kits for gingerbread houses, except they had no gingerbread houses, so instead we picked up a kit to make a gingerbread tree and a gingerbread train.

The kids were a little wound up (no big surprise, considering Christmas is only two days away), so it worked out well that they had lots of toys to play with, and then could go outside into the cul-de-sac and tear around to their hearts content. Eventually everyone calmed down enough to come back in and tackle the gingerbread decorating, and then we shooed the kids back off to play, and we adults all sat around in the living room and tried very hard not to move.

Dinner was Chinese food with all the sisters and cousins, and then my younger sister and niece and brother-in-law and Richard and I headed back to Sacramento, with a short stop in Dixon to pick up a trunk load of presents and things from my parents.

So now we are all back home, eating cookies and drinking decaf coffee and trying very hard to stay awake, although I’m not entirely sure why, and looking forward to having a slightly less busy day tomorrow, before Christmas finally is upon us.

Happy Holidailies!