Today was the day for a little bit of relaxing. I made pancakes for breakfast, and my niece helped me stir the batter. The pancakes were shaped like hearts because she asked if we could do shapes, and it turns out I actually own one set of pancake molds, so naturally I had to fulfill a little girl’s wishes (since that is my role as auntie, of course). After breakfast, I packed up some cookies and the last of the chocolate peanut butter fudge and sent those off with Richard as he left to go spend Christmas Eve with his family. The rest of us all did a little bit of lounging – reading and taking showers and I even got a chance to catch up a little on my Holidailies reading (note to self – maybe the year you are hosting your family for five days at Christmas is not the best year to agree to be a Holidailies reader).

People were starting to get a little antsy, and I wanted to make a new batch of fudge and needed to go to the grocery store, so we all bundled up in coats and mittens and walked over to Trader Joe’s. It’s a good length of a walk for a small person – not so long as to completely tire her out, but long enough that it used helped her work out some excess energy. While at the store, we picked up a few extra tidbits – a box of candy cane Oreo-clone cookies, and some potato and cheese perogies, and a little box of dark chocolate covered espresso beans and some licorice for my dad. Then, since it was right there, and it was just about lunch time anyway, we stopped by a cute little soda fountain and all got (huge) ice cream cones before walking back home.

The irony here is that I did not end up getting all the ingredients I needed to make that new batch of fudge. But I did, at least, remember to pick up an extra bottle of cinnamon, which we needed to make the dough for cinnamon ornaments. My niece and I mixed up the dough, and then put it in the fridge to cool, and then she got distracted by some Christmas themed word searches and other word puzzles I’d printed out for her, and so we never did make the cinnamon ornaments after all.

Dinner was English Muffin pizzas and the potato and cheese perogies. And then we all bundled back up in coats and piled into the car, and headed off to Davis to my parents’ church for the early Christmas Eve service. My older sister and her husband and the two boys had spent the day with his mom, so after the service, we all piled back into our respective cars and then caravaned back to my house. Except on the way home, I remembered the little neighborhood all covered in lights, with the giant muscle Santa, so a few quick calls to the other cars, and we all took a detour down that way so the rest of the family could see them.

Back at home, there was just enough time to get kids bathed and changed, and crowd onto the sofa so Grandpa could read them “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. I’d set up the Google Earth Santa tracker this morning for my niece, and all three kids kept dashing into the computer room to see where Santa was. It was very cute.

Everyone hung their stockings (by some miracle we had exactly enough stocking hangers, and they all fit on the plate rack over the double-wide door between the living room and dining room). Cookies and milk were left out for Santa, and the oldest nephew carefully wrote out a note to Santa while the niece and her mom went outside to leave some carrots for the reindeer. And then we finally got all three kids bundled off to bed.

We gave them a little bit of time to fall asleep, but then everyone had to spring back into action. Eight adults were tip-toeing around the house, filling stockings, bringing in all the remaining presents from where they’d been hidden on the back porch, somehow fitting everything under the tree. The guys took care of the milk and cookies, while my little sister dashed outside to pick up all the carrots and I wrote a note to the kids from Santa thanking them for everything. Only after all of that was completed could we all finally collapse in the living room and stare blearily at each other until we could drag our own tired bodies to bed. Except that there was one more thing to do, so my sister and I instead dragged our weary bodies into the kitchen and stirred together four batches of cinnamon buns for the traditional Christmas breakfast, and now everyone else has gone off to bed except me, because someone has to wait for the dough to rise before punching it down and then stashing it on the back porch. There is no more in the fridge for huge bowls of yeast dough, but the back porch is plenty cold enough to qualify, and even if it isn’t, at this point it’s a little too late to care.

Happy Holidailies!