Christmas Update

First of all, I finally put up a tree on Tuesday. All two feet of it. Ha!

I pulled it out of the box, plugged it in and fluffed it up. Voila. Christmas tree. Then I put it on the mantle and surrounded it with the gifts. Some of the boxes were larger than the tree.

Our Humongous Christmas Tree - Not!

On Christmas Eve, just as we were getting ready to prep the turkey to put into the oven, the power went out. Lately, the power has gone out but then come right back on. Not this time. We kept hoping it would come on but no such luck.

Deciding we needed to get the turkey cooked, Karl fired up the Weber grill and he cooked his first ever turkey over charcoal. It turned out excellent!

While the turkey was cooking, the beer was chilling. Pretty ingenious, huh?

No Power - No Problem

By the time Ryan showed up, the power came back on. It was out for about two hours. Ryan brought along his old Marine Corps room mate, Peter. Then Brandon, Karl's nephew, arrived. Josh and Gregg weren't able to make it due to the weather and road conditions. I'd rather the kids be safe than sorry.

Peter, Jelly & Ryan

Instead of having a formal dinner, we carved the turkey for sandwiches. Brandon brought a honey baked spiral cut ham that is definitely the best ever I have tasted. That also was used for sandwiches. Then there were pigs-in-blankets, chocolate chip cookies, turtle caramel brownies, spinach and artichoke dip, smoked trout dip, various chips for dipping, a vegetable tray and deviled eggs. Nobody went hungry.

We were going to watch A Christmas Story but we've seen it a gazillion times. We opted to watch Ronin with Robert De Niro instead. Of course, we've seen that movie a gazillion times, too, but when you have a houseful of men, well...you get the picture.

After the movie, we ended up at Don & Debi's house. Don is an ex-Marine as well and we wanted to introduce Peter to him. Before long, the guys were all playing Blazing Aces which is a game of flying planes on Don's new Playstation 3 game console. It was actually fun watching them take turns playing and shooting each other down.

Meanwhile, Debi taught me a new card game called "Nerts". It was sort of like playing double solitaire. I enjoyed it.

When the men were tired of being shot down by the younger generation, they joined me and Debi in a game of Farkle.

It turned out to be a fun-filled evening at the Barnhills.

On Christmas Day, after a late morning breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy, we loaded up the gifts for Josh and his girlfriend, Lisa, along with ones for Tim & Patti. The latter two were getting ready to head to Sacramento to spend the rest of the holiday with Tim's brother.

Karl, Jelly, Sally & Buddy at the Hansons'

We stopped at the Hanson house first and visited with them and their kids, Tiffany and Chris. Then we buzzed on down to Josh's house. The roads on the island were atrocious. You can tell they rarely get snow out there. I think the county only has one snow plow by the condition of the roads.

Karl received a nice magnifying glass from Josh, even though we told all of the kids to not buy any presents for us. It will come in handy for his fly tying. We couldn't stay long because we had the dogs with us and they were out in the truck.

We'll visit with Gregg and his family next Monday and celebrate a belated Christmas with them.

Christmas Day turned out quite nicely for us. I hope you had a wonderful day.