Christmas Eve and Christmas

Christmas Eve

I got up and went to work for the day.  I knew it was going to be a really boring day because a lot of people chose to take the entire week off or just a few days during Christmas.  Liz was off for the day so the day was truly boring.  My work went by pretty quickly and I didn't have many phone calls either.

Mom didn't want to host Christmas Eve this year because the house was halfway done and she didn't feel like cleaning or cooking so she asked Doug and Jenn if they wanted to host.  They said sure and prepared for the evening.  They already had their tree and an idea for dinner.  I brought over a table and some chairs.

We got everything together and headed to their house.  We, historically, has always celebrated Christmas Eve with just the five of us.  As time went on people were added.  This year we celebrated with seven people.

We ate chicken, potatoes, salad, bread and had different kinds of drinks.  We ate and talked about random things.  It was weird celebrating Christmas eve at Doug's house rather than at mom and dad's.  After we ate, we went into the living room and passed out presents.

Mom got a InstaPot, I got a Seahawks crock pot, I gave Doug some work out clothes because he expressed interest in starting to go to the gym, mom got some sloths stuff, I got her a DVD of the Seahawks season where they won the Super Bowl, dad got some cool stuff, Doug and Erika got dinosaur onesies.  Doug's was Yoshi and Erika was an actual dinosaur.  It was funny watching them run around being goofy.

We stayed for a while playing with their new puppy, Charlie.  They really didn't need a puppy but they got one anyway.  We thanked them for hosting and that we would see them tomorrow for Christmas.  We had a lot of work ahead of us and I had to get up early to start the breakfast.  The hardest part about tomorrow was trying to keep it together on front of everyone.  This will be my first Christmas in 34 years without Grammie and internally I was having a rough time.

Christmas Day

My alarm went off at 7 and I dragged myself out of bed.  I was exhausted.  We went to bed too late the night before.  I told Ben to start getting up because I was going to need some help.  We got ready for the day and headed out to the kitchen.  I put the casseroles in the oven while Erika cut up the fruit.

I had Ben sweep the stoop area and I put the finishing touches on the tables.  A few weeks ago, we went over to Grandpa's house to help him with some outside chores.  I had asked him if I could borrow some of Grammie's dishes that we used to eat on, the silver serving spoons and some of the cloth napkins.  He said I could have them and I cried a little on the inside.  We tried really hard to find the napkin rings but we couldn't find them.  Maybe some day.  It was very important to me to use Grammie's dishes for Christmas.

I got the muffins cut up into fourths and put everything inside bowls with serving spoons.  We were pretty much ready for the Christmas morning feast with Grammie.

Everyone showed up just after 9 that morning.  Trish invited Aunt Jean to come celebrate with us.

Jenn brought breakfast balls for us to try.  They were almost pancake-like.  They went pretty fast and so did the casserole.  We chatted about various things but most of all you could see it on everyone's face, we were all missing Grammie.  For more than half of us at the table this was the first time in our lives Grammie wasn't here to enjoy Christmas breakfast with us.  Deep down I know she really was there with us.

We went into the living room and everyone found some space on our large sectional couch.  I ended up passing out the presents to everyone.  It was a Christmas paper massacre!  To top it off we threw paper at each other like Grammie would have wanted.  I looked at everyone's demeaner and it just wasn't the same as it was when she was here.  She brought the light with her wherever she went.  She literally lit up the room with her presence.  I miss the way I felt when I was around her.  A huge piece of us was missing.

Mom, Ben and Grandma helped me clean the table and got the dishes running in the dishwasher.  I washed all the cloth napkins and started in on getting the ham ready.  It needed to cook for about 4.5 hours.  We glazed it with brown sugar and fastened slices of pineapple with toothpicks on the outside.

Meanwhile, a handful of people went outside to play with their helicopters from Grammie.  Erika and I had found these in her room in September when Grandpa had us come over to look through her clothes.  Between the two of us we brought home some of her iconic outfits from over the years.  I just couldn't bear to part with them.  I brought home two garbage sacks full of her clothes.  I never want her smell to go away.

Everyone helped clean up the balled up pieces of Christmas paper, the random boxes and bags and we stuffed them into two garbage bags for the recycle.  I put Ben and my stuff into our bedroom away from the Christmas chaos.  The rest of the time people spent picking up their stuff and their gifts and taking them out to their cars to head home and rest for a bit.

The day before I had bought Christmas flowers for Grammie along with a holiday wreath and a Coke.  In between everyone leaving and dinner time I headed out to Tumwater to spend time with Grammie for Christmas.  I was so overwhelmed with emotions it was hard not to break down and cry.  You will never know what it feels like until you actually lose a loved one.  I told her how Christmas was going so far and the presents I got.

This was my post for the day:

"Merry Christmas Grammie!  I stopped by to give you a festive Coke, a wreath and some flowers in your vase.  I picked yellow because you were always wearing your yellow iconic jacket.  We missed you today at breakfast and when we opened presents.  You always were ruthless when you threw the bundled up gift wrapping at us.  We will miss you at dinner time as well.  Love you lots!"

On the way home, since it was a nice day, I stopped by Pioneer Park to find a cache.  I didn't end up finding it because I wasn't looking in the correct places plus there was a lot of standing water in the cache area.  I should have listened to my intuition because I would have found it right away.  I had to come back a few months later to find it.

I headed home to rest a bit before everyone came over.  I checked on the food and played a game of marbles in honor of Grammie because she was pretty competitive at board games...especially this one and the card game pinochle.

We started the potatoes, stuffing and gravy while watching the ham.  It was almost done.  While that was cooking I got all the plates, silverware and napkins on the table.  Touching those teal plates made me really sad but I knew she was glad I was using them...almost like she was proud of me.

Everyone showed up around 4 and food was almost done.  We still were working on cutting up the ham.  Once that was done, all the food was on the table ready to eat.  Everyone filed in and got food with the exception of Kevin and Karla, they went to her parents house for dinner.  We sat at the table, ate and chatted about random things.

After we were done, I had help gather the dishes so we could get everything cleaned up.  People stayed as long as they wanted to.  A few of us played marbles for quarters.  I lost every single game.  I felt like people were cheating.

Around 7ish everyone gathered their things and decided to go home for the night.  I thanked everyone for coming and Ben and I spent the remaining part of the evening cleaning up and putting food away.  We survived another Christmas unfortunately this one was the saddest of them all.  I am so glad I took tomorrow off from work.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Next Adventure:  Shelton Cache Machine