A Good Time Was Had By All

Monday evening the Not-Sleepy family (my folks and sister and her hubs) descended upon the Sleepy home and we trekked off to church together for the candlelight-without-candles service. (They do a service at 6 and another at 8, both with the same format and both called candlelight, though in actuality, only the 8:00 one gives the audience candles. If I'd known that we might have held out for the 8pm service because it was a little strange without them.) It was a good service of carols and verses and readings telling the story of the birth of Christ. I will admit to having a coughing fit in order to cover my laughter at the particular pause that made it sound as if Mary, Joseph and the baby were all in the manger, causing me to ask my sister exactly how big the manger had had to be for those accommodations to work out.

After church, we headed back to our house for some cheese and crackers and various hard sausages and then opened gifts. My family has always opened gifts on Christmas Eve and stockings on Christmas morning because Santa Claus only gave the presents in the stockings, not the ones under the tree. I suspect it may also have to do with encouraging small children to sleep a little longer on Christmas morning since the ubiquitous orange is not really the most exciting thing to hurry awake for. When the gifts had been ogled and shared and oohed and awwed over, we headed to bed with my folks staying the night.

Bright and early (ok, it was 8am, but that really is bright and early on a non-work day) we got up and made waffles and vanilla sauce (if you've never had vanilla sauce on waffles you are missing out on a little slice of heaven here on earth. It's a Mennonite recipe from my great grandmother that is a family tradition in all of the Not-Sleepy families immediately related to us.) When that was finished, I started the prime rib cooking so that it would have time for 30 minutes per pound (we have a lot of medium to medium well lovers, so it needs to cook a little longer - I've found 30 minutes per pound for a boneless prime rib to be about perfect). The boys went off to play computer games and the rest of us just piddled around with occasional bouts of kitchen activity to prepare the green beans, roasted beets, mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, and bread pudding. Everything turned out really well - especially the Yorkshire pudding - gosh that's yummy!

(My uncle had to explain that since I made the Yorkshire pudding in a muffin tin rather than in the pan that the meat was cooked in they were technically popovers. But whatever. I'm calling them Yorkshire puddings and considering them good.)

The Sleepy extended family joined us for our late lunch and afterward we exchanged our gifts and then continued hanging out until around 6pm when we pulled out cheese and crackers again for a light snack/supper for those who were interested. Shortly after that, everyone moseyed back to their respective homes and I finished up the last round of dishes.

It was a good day filled with family. I hope yours was just as wonderful.