Our Extended Christmas Story

It's Christmas morning and it's been a wonderful day so far.  Our Christmas celebrations start on Christmas Eve and don't end until the day after Christmas.  Last night we kicked off the holiday with The Feast of the Seven Fishes.  My mother-in-law is Italian, and her parents were the first generation born in the United States.  In fact, some of her grandparents didn't even speak English.  So we carry on the Italian tradition of the fish feast on Christmas Eve.  When my husband and I started dating, and for the first few years after we were married, we went to his grandparents' house, and it was a huge event.  Now that my husband's grandparents are more elderly, and his grandmother is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, his mom hosts the celebration.

My husband grilled a whole grouper for the meal.  Here are the before and after pictures.

One of the fish dishes is spaghetti with anchovy sauce.  When I first started attending these feasts with my husband, I must admit that I stuck to the meat sauce.  But over the years I've gotten more adventurous and I enjoy the special spaghetti now.  In fact the only two people who ate the meat sauce last night were my son and my husband's uncle.  Another one of the dishes was smoked rainbow trout that my husband's grandfather caught.  It's a fun evening, and the kids get to open their stockings at their Papa and Gran's house.

This morning we woke the kids up (it's sort of bittersweet that we have to wake them now, rather than them being so excited that they just had to wake us) and did our family gift exchange.  I'd post pictures but I promised my teen-aged daughter that there would be no pictures of her in her pajamas on social media.  There are Legos all over our family room floor now!  I got Adobe Lightroom for my gift, and I'm very excited to start using that on some of my photos.  We'll be going to my mom's house for a late Christmas lunch today and we'll exchange gifts with my family there.

Then tomorrow we'll finally wrap up when my in-laws come over to our house with my father-in-law's parents.  We'll do our final gift exchange at that time and finally be done with the holiday.  It's kind of fun to spread it out like this, and it's also always kind of nice to be done.

It's sunny and relatively warm right now, though it looks like I'm going to get my wish of a white Christmas after all.  We're under a Winter Weather Advisory right now.  It's supposed to start snowing this afternoon and we're supposed to get 4 to 6 inches.  I have visions of sitting in our living room and staring out at the falling snow as a background to our Christmas Tree, just like the parents do at the end of A Christmas Story (one of my favorite holiday movies).

I hope that all my readers are having a peaceful and blessed day and enjoying time with the special people in your lives today!