Christmas Adventures

Christmas is a time of joy and cheer, of visiting one's family, and of spending warm evenings eating lots of good food, right?

Or not. This is how we spent a good chunk of Christmas Eve. Aaron's truck up and died on the interstate, in the middle of nowhere. There aren't many exits between Indianapolis and Cincinnati that have nothing around them, but we found one, in Cleves, Ohio. So the AAA Plus membership from Mom goes to the top of my favorite Christmas presents list.


We had the truck towed to a garage, were picked up to join the Christmas Eve festivities, and borrowed a car to get home. Aaron's grandmother makes personalized Santa cookies for everyone each year, and ours were waiting. So the whole thing went much better than it could have - especially when Aunt Kate put in a new batch of hanky panks just for us.

Christmas knitting went a little smoother. I finished all three facecloths by the afternoon of the 24th, so now they're all with their intended recipients. The edging allows them to gather up nicely to hold soap and such, so it's easy to put together a gift package.


But the knitting only goes a little smoother. This is the progress I've made on my Christmas Socks, as of today. So I wasn't wearing new socks for the family gatherings. I wore last year's intended Christmas Party Socks on Christmas Eve, so Christmas Plans were fulfilled, if somewhat late.


And my entrelac socks filled in as substitute Christmas socks on the big day. Everything seemed to go smoothly, and Aaron was a positive saint in the kitchen, preparing mashed potatoes by the stockpotful.

You'll see we had a special little visitor for Christmas. This is Oscar, my nephew's new dog. He's an 8-week-old rat terrier mix, and he's pretty darn adorable. Our own Oscar has never been "Big Oscar" before, so Christmas was a novel experience for him.

Both dogs were reasonably well behaved with the guests, and Max only stole a chunk of turkey, a handful of crackers, and a slice of cake. For a dog, that's worthy of the "nice" list.