Christmas Day 2012

Starting to hand out the gifts.

We love a big mess on Christmas Day!

Ewan and his dad Bret heading out to snowshoe.

 Dylan, Heather and Sarah getting their snowshoes on.  Nice cooler in the background, but I needed some place to store all that soup.

  
There they are, way out by the river. I'm glad I have a zoom lens.

 Checking the depth of the ice.
Ewan is now on his dad's shoulders.  That's a long walk for a little guy.

I finally have some time to sit down while my second load of dishes wash.   I still have four crockpots to wash which you will later understand why.  The last two days have been very busy.  Christmas Eve I spent preparing for Christmas Day.  We are the last stop for the family.  My daughters and their families spend Christmas Eve with their husbands' family, then Christmas morning at their own homes.  Santa comes and on Christmas morning they have their family Christmas.  By the time they get here they are usually tired and full of traditional food, so I make a simple breakfast.  We always have little smokies, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, fruit, juice and homemade bread toast.  After that we open presents.  I always wonder why I clean my house because it gets trashed in a few minutes.  It's fun seeing the excitement and mountains of wrapping paper.  This year with the snow my two daughters, a son in law and my two year old grandson went snowshoeing.  They had so much fun.  We have a pretty big area to snowshoe in and because we live in Wisconsin, we love to take advantage of the snow.  Then later in the afternoon we have soup and sandwiches.  This year I made four different kinds of soup.  I know, that was ridiculous.  I didn't mean to make that much, but I just started peeling carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic and green pepper.  One of my favorite non-electric gadgets is the Vidalia.  It makes cutting up vegetables so easy and quick.  Pretty soon I had piles of vegetables.  So first I made Stuffed Pepper Soup,  then I had some chicken legs in the freezer so I thought Chicken Soup would be good too.  I had an awesome ham that we received as a special gift from our nephew.  It was a huge ham, so I cut off some of the ham and made a Cabbage and Ham Soup.  Finally I still had cubed carrots and potatoes left so I cut off some more ham and made Split Pea Soup.  I had crockpots all over the place.  Then I figured we needed more than just ham so I roasted a turkey breast, made another two loaves of bread and some yeast rolls.  At this point I had enough food to feed our whole neighborhood and lots of dirty dishes.  It is amazing what twelve people can eat and there isn't that much left.  The girls took some food home and we will have soup for the rest of the week.  I also forgot to put out the jello and relishes that I made, so we will eat that this week also.  I am tired and my feet hurt, but all and all it was a wonderful Christmas.