A Quiet Family Christmas

How was your Christmas? Ours was lovely. The kids opened their presents in the morning then DH and I cooked and cleaned up the rest of the day. In the evening we shared a wonderful meal with family and friends followed by some lively conversation. In between kitchen duties DH managed to play a little, some on the new Wii with the kids and some on his guitar with the new amp Santa brought him. Unfortunately he didn't play with his new camera quite as much so I don't have pictures to share. :( I got several new books from my Amazon wish list- yeah! I'm currently reading a book on my (old) Kindle so I haven't cracked open the new books yet, but I will. One is the Alicia Silverstone book The Kind Diet; it's a New York Times bestseller so I'm sure it's going to be great. My mom sent me a Cricut machine which should be a lot of fun to play with too.

My dad and my brother joined us along with our family friend and her mom so there were 9 of us for dinner. My grandmother would have pulled out her fine china and crystal glasses but I settled for paper plates; no one seemed to mind. Dinner turned out well; here's what we had:

Butternut Squash Bisque Soup from the Whole Foods Market Cookbook
Turkey (humanely raised, purchased from Whole Foods)
Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Sweet Potato Casserole (following the Cooking Light recipe instead of my grandmother's traditional, high fat recipe)
Steamed Green Beans
Cranberry Sauce (from a can; everyone likes it as well as the homemade)
Crescent Rolls
Iced Tea

My brother contributed:
wine
coffee beans from Starbucks (I even have a coffee bean grinder, bought on a whim a few weeks ago, so we were able to brew some coffee to go with dessert)

Dessert:
Key Lime Pie
Nut Balls (a raw, vegan dessert)
My dad brought a Panettone

The post dinner conversation was fun; we had 3 Spanish speakers in the bunch (my brother, who's mom is from Cuba), my friend, (who is from Columbia), and her mom, who speaks very little English, but we all communicated quite well, I think. We talked about the little ones and food and language and traveling and all sorts of things. My friend's mom said she would come and make Arepas for us one day- whoo, boy, we're looking forward to that! The evening ended too soon, but I was so tired! The Middle Child and I are fighting colds so I crashed as soon as everyone left. I just hope I didn't get anyone sick; I'd feel terrible if I did because this is an awful cold. At least it wasn't as bad yesterday as today; I'm so grateful I don't have any obligations to deal with today and I've been able to indulge myself by laying around all day reading Wives and Daughters. You just need recovery days like that every now and again.