After-Mas

That’s my nearly-40-year-old schefflera doing its duty substituting for a Christmas tree. The thing is already taking up most of the corner of my dining room and I have to keep pruning it back from the ceiling so it might as well contribute to the holiday decor. We can’t really put lights on though or poor Scheff will drop leaves everywhere. But the rare winter sunshine did a nice job of lighting it up, doncha think? The only real drawback is that I miss the smell of a fir tree in the house. Oh well. Can’t have everything I suppose.

Hope everyone who celebrates had a lovely Christmas! Ours started with our annual Solstice dinner at Milady Daughter’s featuring our immediate family plus Nana. That’s a respectable 10 people right there! We had a lovely evening, the kids all got presents and had a blast playing with each other. Yummy dinner, a plethora of desserts and good company – really, what more could one ask?

Well, MORE! Christmas dinner at T’s brother’s was an amazing 27 people crammed into their tiny house featuring (like ours) only one bathroom. Unsurprisingly there were no arguments, drunken acts or other mayhem. Instead there was much merriment and yummy food. The fresh turkey was delish! A few presents were exchanged, mostly for the kids. The adults have finally had it with trying to give a gift to everyone in our rapidly expanding family. Whew! Now I don’t feel so much like Mrs. Scrooge anymore. Everyone seems content just to get together.

While other people (who obviously haven’t had enough of the shopping frenzy yet) wasted time queuing up for Boxing Day/Week sales, we puttered around home instead. Turns out we should have gone for a walk in the relatively nice weather yesterday though because today it’s dumping rain and very dark and dreary. Oh well.

There’s at least one more big family get-together on New Year’s Day at my nephew’s MIL’s. We tend to kind of overdose on the visiting this time of year! Not complaining at all though since it’s apparently rare for most families to live close by these days. Yes, we are lucky and I am grateful.

So I’ll be back soon with some kind of year-end review post. I need to clear out the cobwebs and take stock before the New Year begins.

More anon!