The day after Christmas

 

 It's the day after Christmas.   We had a truly delightful day and hope that all of you did, as well.  

For the first time ever, I would guess, Mr. T and I didn't do anything in the way of a special Christmas breakfast, no matter how simple.  We've been intermittent fasting for a month or more and so we haven't been eating breakfast.  We'll have "Christmas breakfast" for lunch or dinner one of these days!

Since Christmas was on a Sunday, our church had a special Christmas Day service, with lots of beautiful music by strings and piano, in addition to a brief Christmas message and plenty of congregational singing of Christmas carols.

 
After church we went to our daughter and son-in-law's home for Christmas dinner and the afternoon, which stretched into early evening.  You see some of the group around the dinner table, at top.  Carrie made a crockpot beef roast and I made Ranch House chicken, also in a crockpot.  Carrie's make-ahead mashed potatoes and Parker House rolls were amazing as always, and we rounded out the meal with my Merry Berry Salad.  I've been making this at Christmas (and often Thanksgiving, too) for many years.  It has a homemade cranberry vinaigrette which we really enjoy.  This time, I didn't have the sliced or slivered almonds I needed on hand, so toasted some chopped walnuts instead.  I think we liked that even better!

 After dinner  the boys washed the dishes.  Then it was time to open presents!  As always, we were blown away by the thoughtfulness of our daughter and son-in-law in choosing gifts for us.  This year they chose a cozy type of theme, beginning with two tins of coffee (one regular, one decaf) roasted by our son-in-law Jim!  From there they expanded on the theme with a gorgeous warm winter throw, plenty of books to read and a jigsaw puzzle to work on!

Holy Hygge was the book they had gotten specifically for me.  I had dipped into it at Carrie's house previously and found it interesting, so she got one for me.

We thought we were finished opening our gifts, but then Josiah handed us a very small gift bag containing some things he had made for each of us.  One was a beautiful ornament, which I will try and get a better photo of.  The other gift, for me, was a pair of earrings he had made.  He painted wooden beads to resemble snowman faces, and added them to earring wires along with a crystal bead above each.  I can't describe them that well -- but, again, I will try and take a decent photo.  Meanwhile, enjoy this fun scan of a Christmas postcard:

We had to think of a creative way to wrap Sam's snow broom (for his truck) so his gift wouldn't be a dead giveaway from the moment he saw it.  We turned it into a wrapped peppermint candy.  Of course he figured it out after holding it for a bit, but it was fun to maintain the surprise for a few moments.

After gift-opening, Carrie set out small paper plates and our cookie and fudge plates 

Photo is from Christmas 2021 but there is a resemblance!

 for people to help themselves and bring to the table to nibble as we played several rounds of Cover Your Assets.  Not a new Christmas game -- but, it's a game Grammy can play!

That was our Christmas day.  It was truly lovely.  I hope yours was the same.