Our Christmas Celebration

                                                                                                               Photo by ABW

We settled in to The House of Joy and Love (THOJAL) on our 26 December arrival. Amazing how much joyful noise 8 children can make. The last part of our journey was through a curvy mountain pass. Dark comes early here, which left us in the precarious position I had hoped to avoid. However, the roads were clear and we sailed in with no problem. Getting to the house itself was a challenge (we could see the yellow house, but the entrance was so snowy and icy that we had a hard time finding it). DS had dinner waiting. We visited a while, then all turned in for the night.

Sunday, 27 December
This is our Christmas Day Celebration. DS, W, and I, spent a couple of hours at the local grocery, City Market, in Buena Vista, Colorado. It was hard to manuever when people kept stopping us to exclaim over 1 year old W. Fortunately, there was a designated store employee standing near the front of the store to direct lost people like us to the proper aisle for our necessary purchases. Everyone we met was super nice in this little town. Hmmmmm....do you think they could tell we are from Texas?
Loaded to the gills, we headed back to THOJAL ready to prepare the long awaited feast.
The conversational level finally lagged as we tucked in to a partially traditional meal - turkey, dressing, giblet gravy, steamed brussel sprouts, fresh green beans, and pea-corn salad. I know, it was heavy on the green side, but we had the things we liked!
Dinner was followed by the sharing of presents. This involves the family tradition of handing the presents out and opening them one by one, a process that prolongs the procedure significantly. Our innkeeper kindly provided a small fiber-optic Christmas tree to enhance the celebration. As the children played with new toys, the adults started putting together a very complicated picture puzzle. When we finish it, we will leave it behind with a challenge for the next group to put it together in less than our recorded time. We have never heard whether anyone has taken the challenge.
The evening ended with several family members soaking in the hot tub. All declined the, sometimes traditional, roll in the snow.