I know this is a little late, but I wanted to make sure to wish all of you here in MyBloggerstown a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!. I have made so many wonderful and supportive friends here, and I value each and every one of you.

My Christmas has turned out to be wonderful. For myself, I gave myself the simplest gift ... I finished up my grading and submitted final grades this afternoon. That means I am free to relax and have time for myself! That also means, I can return to posting because I have free time again.

For actual holiday celebrations, things have gone really nicely. As with every year, my family does its major celebrations on Christmas Eve. We do a simple pot luck thing where everyone brings simple finger foods so we pick over things while spending wonderful time together. We finish things up by exchanging gifts.

I know that Martin really looks forward to hearing about menus so I took notes just for him. I made up my usual chocolate peanut butter bars, California-style potato skins (I use grilled chicken, broccoli, and cauliflower with alfredo cheese sauce and topped with provolone cheese), and bacon and chicken quesadillas. Other food choices included chocolate-potato balls (traditional Quebecois treat), raspberry squares, cookies of all types, nachos, meatball grinders, dynamites (sausage & pepper grinders), turkey sandwiches, spinach pastries, and whoopee pies.

We were all a little disappointed because my brother wasn't able to come home for Christmas. He is a Marine, and we are all used to him not being able to join us after 3 years in Japan, two in Iraq, and a couple on the west coast. With his being in Virginia, we had hoped this year would be a little different. He is an intelligence trainer, and he had to do a training session too close to our festivities so he was unable to join us. He is well loved and he was definitely missed. I am hoping that he will be able to come home soon so we can do a mock Christmas with him.

A good time was definitely had by everyone who came to the party. Ray and I were a little late. After the more than 2 feet of snow that we got with the two storms this past weekend, we are getting a heat wave that was kicked off with a lot of rain. That meant we had to go pretty slow in the drive from our house to my cousin's because of all the fog. To make matters worse, we got lost in his neighborhood! Everyone thought it was really funny because we are always the first ones to any party and we were arrived about 20 minutes after everyone else.

Our gifts went over really well with everyone. I was a little worried. I usually am very careful with the shopping ... hunting down for the perfect gift(s) for each person as I roam around store after store. With my tight schedule, I cheated and got everything online. I ended up doing it two Sundays ago while I was covering the Children's Room desk at the library. I felt really guilty. Fortunately, everyone still thought I chose wisely.

We had a new addition to the family. The oldest of the next generation has a boyfriend. She is a freshman in college and has met a really nice guy. She had told everyone not to buy anything for him when we asked for suggestions, but no one really listened. Who wants to be the only person with nothing as you watch everyone else open gift after gift. He was really appreciative, and seemed a little overwhelmed by the fact that we were all thinking of him.

Ray and I got up this morning and we exchanged gifts. We basically just did stocking-stuffers with the understanding that we would get the big stuff after today. It was really for two reasons. Ray knew that I was going to have a lot of trouble getting shopping done for him with most of my free time tied up with grading. We also thought that we would be able to do really well with the post-holiday bargains.

Today, we got to do Ray's family. That is always an adventure. My family takes turns with everyone opening a gift while on the center stage. We like to share the opening process so we can all get excited and take pictures as we need to. Ray's family pretty much has a free-for-all with everyone opening everything at once. Only the kids get gifts.

To make things even more interesting, my mother-out-of-law and my sister-out-of-law are not speaking. That is even more awkward because they live on two floors in the same building. That means everyone has to go up and down to get a chance to see each other.

My sister-out-of-law hosted the big meal. We had lasagna, ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, rolls, shrimp cocktail, cheese & crackers, sugar cookies and pistachio cake.

Things ended up turning out quite nicely when my mother-out-of-law came upstairs and we all ended up sitting down together and chatting.

After we were done, I came home and finished up the last of the projects I needed to grade, finalized the participation grades for all the students, and calculated final grades. I ended up posting them around 5:30pm. I did all this while watching It's a Wonderful Life By the end of the movie, I was finished and I was all teary-eyed from the story. I love happy endings.

So, I hope the rest of you had as much fun with the holiday. I miss all of you greatly, and I hope to catch you all up with what I have been doing for the last three weeks. I took notes about things I really wanted to share with you while I was on a forced leave (thanks for the suggestion, Martin!).

Merry Christmas, and I love you all!