Christmas Dinner

On Saturday, I hosted my first ever Christmas dinner! How fun! Although cooking for company is not new to me, there's just something about making a Christmas dinner that seems so special. We enjoyed the afternoon and evening with our dear friends, S and T and their kids, along with S's parents. I also had the sweetest little tag-along child for the day as I was babysitting for a friend who was in the hospital after giving birth to her new son. Welcome to the world, Mason!

Aside from a minor incident which involved a child, my chin, a carrot, a fork and a first-degree burn, I think the day went very well considering I was placed in the mama position for an 18-month old for the day and my fabulous dude ended up having to do a billion hours of overtime plowing because of the snow storm.

For dinner, we had roasted chicken (yup - I'm way too cheap for a turkey), mashed potatoes, gravy, crockpot stuffing, carrot casserole, green bean casserole, butternut and hubbard squash, corn, pickles and rolls (thanks, P). For dessert, we had Christmas sweets, peanut butter pie (or.. errmm -- I mean peanut butter dessert. Some kids don't like pie) and delicious mixed berry pie (thanks, T!). After dinner, the kids (minus the cutie tag-along since she was a wee bit too tired) went outside with my fabulous dude to ride around on the sled we gave them. They had a blast. Since they didn't have their snow pants, the hubby dressed them all in his long underwear and bundle them up in blankets, mittens and hats to pull them in the sled. How fun!

I had meant to take a bunch of pictures of the cooking process, the dinner and my guests, but by the end of the night I only had a few. I guess in the hustle and bustle I just forgot. Here are a few that I did get.

T with her yummy pie

Eating dessert

The kids loved pulling each other around on the sled - inside.
"Sweet ... we get to wear Evan's underwear" - G.

Cleaning up. What a sweet helper.

Okay, so maybe I took more pictures than I thought. And no, for those of you wondering, I am not posting a picture of the burn (although I do have one).

After dinner we cleaned up, took the little one home and then came home and did more cleaning up. Sunday morning I left with my fabulous dude's cousin to come up to his home town. The normally 2 1/2 hour drive took us 5 hours because of the weather. Not a fun time. But, we're here safe and sound, praise God. Since I was already on holidays from school I decided to come up early to help my MIL get ready for later in the week when the rest of the family will be arriving. Yesterday we did some wrapping. Today we headed into town to do grocery shopping and finish up last minute Christmas shopping. When we got home, we got to work. I did some more wrapping and also made a lasagna and some manacotti for Christmas day (we are having our Christmas dinner with his extended family on boxing day) while my MIL did some work at her sewing machine. Now, we're just getting ready to sit down to eat homemade chicken stew and cornbread. Delicious! I love the holidays.