This morning, Uncle Keith & Aunt Suzanne hosted our whole family for a Christmas Eve breakfast. It was all super delicious, and we all had a great time together! Grammy & Papa got all five girls these Buccee’s Christmas shirts on their trip last weekend, and we planned for them to wear them together today.
Papa let Addie try a few too many things this morning, but she really had a great time with all of it 🙂
The back of their shirts say “never calm, always bright.”
Mama had these tea towels made for us ladies, with my Grandmother’s recipe for her famous “angel biscuits” (which are my very favorite thing ever), with the recipe written in my Grandmother’s handwriting. I cried when I opened this. It’s a very special keepsake and I will treasure it forever.
After naps back at home for almost the whole family (myself included, thankfully), Emmie was a BIG helper to me in the kitchen. We made “Hawaiian mac salad” to go with our dinner tonight (with the crockpot Kalua pork that I put in the crockpot super duper early this morning), and we made dill dip to take to Grammy’s house tomorrow.
She also willingly (and excitedly) jumped up to help me put away last night’s clean dishes, and help wash all the afternoon’s dirty dishes. And she was legitimately, actually washing too! She was honestly helpful, and I was so proud of her.
We had a little bit of chill time between afternoon activities and dinner time, where we just hung out and played in the living room for a bit.
We got the giant almost-6-pound Boston butt out of the crock pot and Jeff pulled the pork with his bear claws, skimmed the fat & grease out, and then put it back in the crock pot while I finished up the rest. The mac salad had been chillin’ in the fridge, then I made some white rice & steamed some fresh broccoli, and drained a can of pineapple. I had actually seen Emily Mariko from TikTok (see her vids on this meal here, here & here) make most of this stuff for almost the same exact meal recently. I thought it looked yummy & easy, and wanted to give it a try for something slightly “fancy” and a little different for our Christmas Eve meal. And it turned out so good! I was actually the only one that liked the mac salad, but I really loved it all, especially all together.
After dinner, we put away the leftovers, made hot cocoa to-go, and went to walk through the lights at Dorothy B. Oven park! It was super crowded, and we had to wait in line for about 10 minutes just to pull into the parking lot at TRBC, but we made it in eventually, and it was a nice time! Addie had fallen asleep in the car, but woke up once we got in there, so she got to see the lights too.
We actually ran into one of Emmie’s school friends (the one who’s birthday party we just went to last weekend), so we chatted with them for a bit, and took turns taking family photos of each other.
It was late when we got home, but we still had to put out the magical reindeer food that Emmie made in class, and then go through her bedtime routine. I actually made her a small pork sandwich on a Hawaiian roll (which I forgot to actually put out at dinner time), and then we went through the bedtime routine. It was actually a really rough bedtime situation, with lots of hoopla and frustrations, but we made it eventually…
It was easy to get Addie-pie down for bed, about an hour ago, but she’s tossing and turning and fussing now, so we’ll have to deal with that…
The boys washed all the dishes for us tonight, and Jeff has been working on wrapping some presents, but we’re not quite done yet. I’m gonna go grab Addison and get her settled back down, and let him keep working on presents. I’m exhausted now after such a big day, and we have another big day tomorrow, so I’ve got to get some rest now…
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