So, after the “best Christmas ever” time of opening gifts, we moved on to a tradition brought to the marriage from the Hoyt canon: a breakfast of sausage egg soufflé and fresh fruit. We had originally had cinnamon biscuits on the menu, too, but I gave my can of biscuits to my friend Saundi on Christmas Eve. Her family was headed out of town the next day, and she had forgotten to pick up a can for Christmas-morning monkey bread. As our refrigerator was stuffed to the gills with food for Christmas dinner, we decided we could forgo the breakfast biscuits!
Jeff brewed himself some coffee with his new machine, Elijah and I picked out our hot chocolate, and we sat down to a terrific breakfast, if I do say so myself.
After breakfast was a mad time of actually unpackaging all the cool stuff that the kids got. Then, around 10:00, I got a phone call from my dad. He was all alone on Christmas Day and wondered if we would mind him driving over to spend the rest of the day with us.
Of course not!
It takes about four hours to drive from his place to ours, and, with the copious snow that had fallen the previous day, it might take a bit longer. In any case, he would be arriving right about the time I would have Christmas dinner ready!
In the course of this conversation, I also discovered that my brother Thad was planning to drive to Michigan on New Year’s weekend to retrieve some of his stuff that was being stored there. My other brother Zech and his family were planning to visit us that day after Christmas for a few days, but that plan suddenly seemed a bit nonsensical if we wanted to see Thad. So, I ended up calling Zech, and we decided that they would not come to Illinois, but rather we would go to Michigan on New Year’s Eve to celebrate Hoyt family Christmas there.
There’s nothing like a last-minute change in plans.
Anyhow, my dad got here about 3:00, and dinner was served. It featured a spiral-cut, honey ham (seven pounds worth, to be precise, as we were expecting company to help us eat the leftovers!), broccoli casserole, loaded baked potato casserole, seven-layer salad, and yeast rolls. Then, for dessert, we had about five truckloads of Christmas sweets. Most excellent, again, if I do say so myself!
Afterwards, Dad agreed to watch Jeremy for us while we went to see Tangled. As I mentioned earlier, I think that this is one of the best movies that Disney had made in years, and we were glad to finally get to see it, especially after our earlier failed attempt.
When we got back home, we opened gifts with my dad. As I didn’t know he was coming when we did our first round of gifts, the kids had already opened their stuff from him. Here he is, opening his gifts from us.
Then, we spent the evening playing one of the games that Dad had given the kids for Christmas. As we had church the next day and Dad had a long drive home, we turned in.
All in all, this was a fine Christmas!
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