Boxing Day

The boys were here for Christmas. We all survived the traditional Chinese food on Christmas eve. I love that it’s easy and we spend alot of time just talking,laughing, playing games and not alot of time cleaning up. We decided on fresh ham for our Christmas dinner and I had everything scheduled to the minute so the oven would be available for this giant 9 pound roast. I know…that’s alot of meat for 6 people but everybody wants to take leftovers home! I was just about to put the pie in the oven…I mean, I was standing there with the oven door open, pie in hand…and…the power went out!!! Could there be a better time?! We waited…and waited and I started to think about what I could cook instead of the giant roast — something that wouldn’t take long to defrost or to cook on the grill…thinking about how many steaks I can retrieve from the freezer without keeping the door open for too long. I decided on a time after which we would scrap the idea of the ham. Jim was doing chores so I ran over to the neighbors’ with a shortbread. The door opened and the wonderful smell of roasting turkey filled the air…a giant generator is a wonderous thing! Our friends, Nina & John, stopped by a little later. They were filling time while waiting for the power to come back on, too, and had heard that the outage was caused by a downed tree on the main road. We had a nice visit and it did keep my mind off the lack of power. Jim came in to take a breath before heading down to the culvert for water and the power came back on! He was saved from having to haul water from down the road and we were just a few minutes over the deadline for a change of menu so I decided to get the beast into the oven and convect the thing. So…we ate a little later than originally planned but we all had fun and nobody had to go any great distance to get home anyway. Today we’re kicking back a bit and looking over the wonderful books and music we were gifted. FUN!