The post-holiday family gathering originally planned for Sunday evening was postponed until this evening. So after Richard returned from work and his Weight Watchers meeting, we scurried off to Dixon, braving the fog, and a whole lot of fog-addled drivers across the Yolo causeway, to get there. My older sister and her family have spent the last few days busily painting the boys’ rooms, since at the ripe old age of 10, the eldest was a bit tired of having a border in his room with cute little trains, and really wanted something a bit more grown up, and since they were doing one, they might as well do both at the same time, so the youngest got his room redone as well. So they arrived with stories of painting (darker colors require lots more coats), while all I had to report was two days spent doing nothing more than frantic knitting in order to finish up Richard’s present.

The plan had been to sit down for dinner as soon as we arrived, but there were some glitches involving burners and frying pans. So instead we all gathered in the living room and opened Christmas presents, and the two sons-in-law had just enough time to get embroiled in some kind of nerdy Linux-based discussion before dinner was served.

I made my very last batch of shortbread and lemon curd bars for the year, and brought those along to share. There was the traditional special holiday pie, and my older sister brought along the remains of all her Christmas baking, which was especially appreciated by my mom and I, since neither of us baked a single cookie this year and we were sorely missing them.

I am now stuffed to the gills with pie and lemon bars and homemade bread and brown sugar-topped sugar cookies (which are not really sugar cookies at all, in the traditional sense) and too many candy cane cookies and pieces of homemade candy. Richard opened a pile of birthday presents and came home with a sizable stack of new books to read. The last of the family gifts have been delivered, which means now I can finally say that I gave each set of sister-brother-in-law and my parents a video webcam, along with a box stuffed full of some combination of the following – lemon curd, apple butter, plum jam, spiced plum jam, red pepper jelly, corn relish, pomegranate jelly, and candied lemon peel – which was the primary goal for all the canning and preserving I have been doing these past many months.

And when we got home I gave Richard one of his birthday present early, and I think he never quite suspected that this is the year he would receive a cuddly stuffed, knitted Dalek of his very own.

Tis the season for Holidailies!