Yesterday went better than I could have ever planned for. I didn’t sleep any between 3pm on Christmas Eve and 2PM on Christmas Day, and I managed to remain fully functional the entire time. Christmas day started at 11:45PM on December 24th as my mother woke up from her sleep (she went to bed at 6:15PM). I had a discussion about random stuff with her, then I proceded to the kitchen at about 12:30am. From here I started the work for the evening event, begining where any good southern event starts: the brewing of the tea. After the tea was brewed the day’s first batch of coffee started as my mother got up and was ready to begin her day. At that time I wasn’t sure how to procede for the day, so I decided to hunt some dessert recipies. I didn’t find anything I really wanted to make, but had a sudden inspiration from the sound of the freezer dumping ice: a frozen dessert. I developed a recipie for what I called “Artic Smores”, it starts with a spring-form pan (but is cleaner in another type of pan). I then built the crust from graham crackers and butter (lots of butter), then I added about half a bag of marshamallows to the crust and baked until they were starting to brown. Next up I grabbed some chocolate pudding mix, some evaporated milk (althought next time I will use condensed), some creme cheese and some regular milk, threw it all in the mixer (KitchenAid Professional grade mixer) and came out with an intersting filling. I poured it into the pan on top of the mellows and then toped it off with some fine graham cracker dust. I promptly took it to the downstairs freezer, where it stayed for the day.
After that little expedition it was nearly 2:30am, time for breakfast. I decided to go with something light, so I fried some sausage and prepared a pot of oats. By 3:00 breakfast was ready. Sausage sandwiches (because my mother hates biscuits) and sweet oatmeal (the sugar jar was there, it was begging to be used). It took about 30 minutes to pry my father out of bed (even though he usually gets up at 3AM). We all ate and then we decided it was time for the tree stuff, so we took care of that. I got a new camcorder (Sony Handycam Digital8), electric razor, DVD Player (Sony 5 Disk), a new Wireless-G Access Point and various other things. Some Christmas mornings that would have been my primary focus, but this year I was more concerned with how much my mother liked her gifts, especially her new diamond earrings. My secondary focus was on the agenda for the day.
Once the living room was returned to a non-diaster state it was nearing 5AM, the first batch of cookies was prepared and the cake was started. The general pace of the day went on like this until about 2PM when we prepared the table and laid everything out. At 3PM I started the multiple pots of wassail. At about 3:30PM my energy ran out and I went down for a 1 hour power nap (without causing fail to the schedule). At 4:30PM I was back up and functional enough to prepare the cornbread for the evening, as well as light the candles and instruct everyone in my little team as to what to do to finish up preparations. At 4:45PM the first guest arrived and I began serving wassail, cider, coffee and tea. at around 5:10PM we were still a few guests short, but since I was in charge of the event I decided to procede on schedule and we began dinner. While we were finishing up with serving dinner and starting the very very informal eating the late people came in. At most family functions this is usually an interuption because everyone stops, greets and we move quickly to get the late people caught up, this time I handed them a cup of wassail and a bowl, then pointed to the pots of vegetable stew and chili. After a while of eating and people shedding many layers of clothing we began dessert at 5:40PM. Dessert lasted until about 10PM. During the event I didn’t hear a single negative comment about anyone or anything and everyone got along so well. This family has a bad habbit of bringing up crap from the past and doing other things to ruin the mood of events like this, but I was pleasantly shocked when that didn’t happen. Maybe it just takes a sugar high to make everyone get along?
At 10:30 or so everyone was ready to go. By 11PM the house was empty and I was back to being alone, but somehow much happier than when the day began. I finally went to sleep at about 4AM on December 26th, about 40 hours after I had awoken.