Holiday cheer!

t was a weird Christmas. We technically celebrated Christmas the night before thanksgiving when Ricki was here. I worked Christmas eve and day, we spent all week working on the house trying to get it ready for furniture to move in the Monday after.  However, because my mom is my mom, it was a good Christmas full of good food, family time, and smiles.  everyone had smiles. and as far as Christmas’s go, if this has to be the last one for Grandma, which is a distinct possibility, it was a good one to have.

the most important part of Christmas to my family:

peppernuts and caramels

while making the caramels, my grandma who gets extremely short of breath walking to the bathroom right next door, was yelling cooking instructions to my mom. who, for the record, has made these for years. they were perfect.

while make the peppernuts my grandpa made my mom sit down and re-write the recipe so that each step was thoroughly explained, because “the process is just as important as the ingredients.” Then for good measure they added in some favorite stories surrounding this holiday tradition.

Grandpa decided on Christmas eve that it can’t be Christmas without some sort of tree, so my my mom, who wants to make grandpa happy, asked my dad, who wants to make mom happy, to come up with some sort of tree for grandpa that would be small and easy. Dad climbed over the fence of a closed tree lot, and came up with this:

perfect for their collection of mini ornaments

Grandpa’s face when he saw it:

pure happiness.

and as far as family goes, my brother lives the closest of the grandkids and sees them the least because of his schedule.  Everyone was happy when he made it to Christmas dinner:

(yes, I know… crummy picture. someday I will master the art of inside people photography. )

I had more favorites, but my computer decided to run an update before I saved the edits in photoshop, so these will be my favorites for today

It was a good Christmas.

part of you capture