The Great American Road Trip: Day 114

I greeted Christmas morning with a drive to feed Tenga for the last time - the sunrise sky was somehow a perfect beginning to the day, driving along on nearly empty highways and streets in the chilly morning sunshine. I got home just as everyone was getting their morning coffee and sitting down to open presents. Mum, Papa and I watched and made appreciative comments while everyone showed off their new swag, and helped clean up wrapping paper and fold boxes up for next year. There were Christmas parties to attend, which left Mum, Papa, and I with a nice quiet time to open our gifts to each other. We tend to make it a drawn out affair, opening things one at a time so that we can all see them, which works well when there's only 3 or 4 people (in the past, Dad would come over in the morning for presents and then our neighbors would join all of us for Christmas dinner). Maggie helped, of course, until I opened a box by ripping off the packing tape, and the noise scared her so much that she retreated to the study for the rest of the present opening affair.

The afternoon was spent cooking and re-heating, with people coming and going as things needed to be picked up or last minute gifts needed to be found. Soon the house was pleasantly full of people (14, I believe?), which meant hugs and greetings and lots and lots of good food. For us, Christmas is when we tend to eat a lot of Thanksgiving foods - turkey and stuffing, roast beef, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie - plus a few other additions like raspberry jello salad, creamed corn, cream of mushroom-baked cauliflower and broccoli, shortbread, and lime mousse. We had the family gift opening extravaganza, thank you's exchanged across the sound of rustling tissue and ripping paper and lots of laughter. Slowly everyone started to trickle out home, and soon we had the dishes washed and were dozing on the couch watching football in no time. Merry Christmas!

Highway sunrise

I love the streets with the brightly painted "gingerbread" houses with the matching elaborate white trim

An old police station, abandoned since Katrina. See the tree on the roof?

Merry Christmas, Tenga!

With Mom :D

Maggie surveying our small family Christmas

Mom with her new bicycle bell that looks like a speedometer, accurate if she bikes really really fast

Mom knows how much I love her colorful little teapot, so she brought me back one from Scotland so that I could have my own ;)

Mom and Papa with the little moose ornament that they had to stand next to each other in order to unwrap because I labelled it as being for both of them