Random Holiday

Every year I swear that I will NOT find a reason to go to the store on December 24th. And every year it seems I end up at the store. This year it was Walmart.

We needed sprinkles and frosting for Santa's cookies. Because it wouldn't be good enough to leave Santa brownies. Made with the brownie mix that was ALREADY in my pantry. No siree. Santa had to have Christmas cookies. Meaning we had to go to Walmart.

Did I mention that we also needed to hit the photo department to print some pics for Diva Nana & Diva Papa's Christmas gift?

While I braved the retail world on Christmas Eve, I did manage to avoid it today until after church. The Tweenager got a couple of gift cards for Christmas and they were burning a hole in his pocket. It wasn't horrible, as all of the bargain-hunters were presumably home sleeping after hitting the stores at oh-dawn-thirty.

For our Christmas Eve dinner, we had homemade tamales and pulled barbecue chicken sandwiches. We had leftovers for Christmas dinner. I'm making a more traditional Christmas dinner tomorrow night. Diva Nana & Diva Papa are coming for a visit. I was very excited to find Butterball Turkeys on sale earlier this week at Target for 50 cents a pound. SCORE!

I'm glad DN & DP are coming for a visit. We missed being together for Christmas this year. Mom commented that it was the first Christmas since she and my dad got married that they weren't with family.

Did I mention they celebrated their FORTY-SECOND wedding anniversary on the 21st?

The boys seemed really happy with their Christmas gifts. DH was so thoughtful in his gift giving to me. I got a gift card to buy books for my Kindle and a big digital picture frame for my office. He loaded it with dozens of pictures from throughout the years.

We'll do gifts again tomorrow with the Grands. My favorite gift, though, is coming at the end of the week. My brother and his family, who have lived in Texas for almost ten years, are moving to the Windy City this week. They'll be living in a suburb not terribly far from us, and I'm so looking forward to having The Lawyer, Diva SIL, Tex, Sir Falls-A-Lot and The Bean close by!

I managed to get a decent picture of the three boys this Christmas. If I'd gotten around to sending Christmas cards, they would've had this on it. Hope you all had a very Merry Merry!