Parting the Water: Christmas Eve and Day

Our Family tradition is to set up and decorate the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. When the kids were small the decorating didn't occur until after the kids went to bed. The tree was mysteriously decorated during the night by some bearded elf and his helper usually after that same old elf had finish inserting tab YY into Slot ZZ as illustrated on page 27 of the assembly instructions of some gift. Somewhere about 1:30 to 2:00 AM the display was complete the old elf would trudge off to bed to be awakened three or four hours later by excited giggles and whispers.

These days the old elf gets some help from the now mature gigglers and the tree trimming is completed in the early evening, accompanied by snacks and gathers on some family.

We have an eclectic collection of ornaments that mostly bring fond memories of years gone by and the events that season our lives.

The soldier below commemorates Clarice's first Christmas and the porch swing when John and Clarice became an item.

The tree bears documents, Blake Apryl and Skyler. The little manger scene is one we collected in Bethlehem a couple of years ago. Almost every ornament has some kind of story behind it.

Once the tree is decorated the snacking and gathering begins.

Blake and Apryl showed up with their newest addition.

Sunday morning we headed off to Church and in the afternoon started preparing a Christmas dinner. It wasn't clear who would be there and when we would eat as we gathered the items for dinner in the week or so before Christmas, but the 14 pound turkey and all the trimmings seemed to be more than enough for all 13 people who were actually there Christmas day evening.

As I was off carving the turkey my camera got used to record a variety of scenes. The perpetrator who will remain nameless eventually shot himself in the face.