Christmas, ahoy!

This month is FLYING by. Seriously. You know it's bad when my response to someone asking Kimmy's age at Picture People yesterday was, "Uhhh, 16 months...I think. Wait, it's December! Wow, yeah, she is 16 months."

I'm so excited for Christmas! That being said, I must express my disdain about something. IU doesn't close for staff on Christmas Eve, meaning that's not a paid vacation day for full-time staff. Not that that would apply to me, anyway, since I'm part time. But how are you gonna make Black Friday a paid holiday and not Christmas Eve? Really? Black Friday over Christmas Eve?! If not for the fact that it's a major Christian holiday alone, then at least for the sheer fact that so many employees will take that day off, most offices will get none to few phone calls, and the cost of opening the campus that day will probably outweigh any money brought in by productivity.

This whole thing made me realize that I'm very strongly opposed to working on Christmas Eve. My sincere empathy to anyone in retail or the medical field forced to work. I'm sorry.

So, I took Christmas Eve off! The $40 that I would have made from working is a small price to pay for spending my day with Kimmy (and Jarrell, after he gets off work), enjoying our new (and old) holiday traditions, like going to a candlelight service, baking, watching Christmas movies, and talking about Jesus.

I've been making lots of fun lists, and I've got our holiday festivities all planned out!

Christmas Eve:

• homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast

• appetizers all day...sausage balls, cheese ball, summer sausage, crackers, buffalo chicken dip, etc.

• baking pies and Santa's cookies and doing cooking prep

• candlelight service in the evening

• open 1 gift (Kimmy's gift is a Little People nativity)

• egg nog

• enjoying a fire in our fireplace

Christmas morning:

• breakfast casserole and fried apples and sparkling cider

• presents

• cooking

• family nap time

And here comes the best part!

Christmas dinner:

• spinach-artichoke dip with toasted baguette slices

• roast duck

• duck gravy

• potatoes fried in duck fat

• Lisa Haddox-Heston's broccoli-rice-mushroom casserole

• roasted acorn squash

• sautéed asparagus and green beans

• deviled eggs

• Mamaw Mabel's famous yeast rolls

• rice pudding

• bread pudding

• red velvet cake

• iced tea

• wine

I'm so excited to eat! Yes, that's a lot of food, but quite unlike our Thanksgiving feast (which Jarrell assured me several of his work friends would attend, despite my strong [and coincidentally valid] belief to the contrary), we are keeping the dishes small this time. Hopefully, we'll only be left with 2-3 days of leftovers.

I am eagerly awaiting Christmas morning! I'm curious to see what Kimmy thinks of her gifts, sure, but I'm also excited to celebrate the birth of Jesus and read some of my favorite scriptures from Luke to my Kimmy.

1 week left!

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In other news, we got our family Christmas picture made last night, finally! We don't have time (or money) for personalized photo cards this year, but thanks to a great Groupon for a photo package, we have plenty of wallets and 4x6s to send to family and friends tucked in Christmas cards! For everyone else, I am going to make an e-card to send out. Gotta spread Christmas cheer as well as I can!

Kimmy and I are also going to WV this weekend for a quick trip. I've got to get my car's annual state inspection done, as well as an oil change and tire rotation. I think we are also going to do a little pre-Christmas celebration on Saturday. Should be lots of fun, minus that long drive!

More later.

-Kels