No snow, but it's Christmas

Oh my, Betty was already up reading a book when I entered the living room this morning. Guess we are the most excited about getting up early on Christmas morn. Santa seems to have lightened his sleigh considerably judging from the loot under the tree. After everyone was up here and Brett, Autumn, Rob and Loralyn made the trek over, the decision was made that we would eat breakfast before opening presents.

Here we have Annemarie and Sneed at work on the scrambled eggs for the scrambled egg and sausage casserole. She also made some cinnamon buns and Eggos, and we drank coffee and a variety of juices.

We took turns opening our gifts so everyone could see what each person received. Everyone was so generous and we received some very nice gifts. I especially liked the 2 scarves I got since they are all the rage with people wearing them all day. I have found it keeps the neck nice and warm and have taken to wearing mine all day even in the house. Sneed and I both got SB t-shirts - cool. Gift cards and magnets - all way too much, but I'm not complaining.

Sneed and soon I found out that SB is not like Katy in that the grocery store is not within a mile of the house nor open on Christmas. We had to go to the next town/city to find the one store that was open. They were doing a smashing amount of business. I forget what missing ingredient we were searching, other than another 12 pack of Coca~Cola. (I wasn't the only one drinking them)


The two flowers on each end were in a flower box outside the grocery store. They were too beautiful to not snap a photo or two or three or four. The one in the middle was growing in the garden at Annemarie's.

While we were gone, Annemarie and all her red-shirted elf helpers were in the kitchen whipping up all sorts of goodies for our dinner. Aedin, Dylin, and Olsin called on Skype so we enjoyed a conversation with them during the culinary preparations. Olsin spelled 'Santa' for us. H-O, H-O, H-O. Well done, Olsin! Once again, it was hard pushing away from the table after filling up on such good food.

After cleaning up, Annemarie pulled out Cranium and we paired up with our spouses and in her case, her fiance = ). Fortunately, Sneed and I drew a lot of the cards that required spelling or definitions so we whipped round the board quickly. We were stuck in the middle until Annemarie and Brett joined us and challenged us to start getting some of the other categories answered correctly. Sneed is so clever and made it easy for me to guess 'boxing' with his modeling clay boxers giving us the win.



Maybe next time Bruce and I will get the memo about wearing red....