Christmas Eve Party, Dec. 24

On Christmas Eve, Sunday, we went to church, then rushed home to prepare the goodies for our traditional Christmas Eve party. We invite whoever we can find that doesn't have other plans for the evening, and this year we enjoyed the company of church friends, the Rineharts, and our pastor dropped by for a bit.

We tremendously missed Alesha's presence during our Christmas festivities this year, and Erika's being on crutches hampered her ability to help somewhat, although she was a real trooper. However, Jeremiah and I ended up doing most of the work! The kids always get to pick which recipes they want to make. Jeremiah chose to make the curried cheese ball. He is a good chef and likes to experiment with variations. He doubled the curry powder and it was perfect!

Erika made the ham ball, and then she was pretty much done in. By the way, this tradition started Christmas of 1990. It was the first time we had all been together for Christmas in quite a few years, and we had Christmas at mom and dad's Burbank house in Binghamton. In order to lighten the cooking load on mom, we assigned everyone to make a party/snack favorite food. Mom and Dad provided a fantastic array of chips and pop for those who were home from Africa after a term of being derived from junk food! And we have continued this tradition every year since then with some variations.

Another very special part of our evening is a tradition that was introduced to us Christmas of 1994, when we once again were all together as a family, this time in Nigeria, at Dean and Peggy's home. We watched a video of Handel's Young Messiah, and enjoyed it so much we watch it every Christmas Eve. It is an interesting experience for our guests, because it is quite unique. Other than that we just eat and talk and listen to Christmas music.