Merry Christmas

I figure it’s better to say it late than never. That is also my stance on Christmas cards, The last batch will be in the mail soon, I promise. We kind of ran out of envelopes and time.

Mostly though I am referring to Christmas itself.

We were awoken by the sound of stampeding hooves above our heads. Or possibly a very excited twoish year old excited about opening his presents. We rolled out of our nice comfy air mattress, after a full nights sleep, and prepared to go above stairs.

Mom had breakfast cooking on the stove, Justin was working to keep Sabbath from opening his presents. We leaped into the foray. Paper flew every which way as we tore into gifts. Sabbath had carefully chosen a bottle of Mountain Dew for his father, beautiful perfume for his mother, and m&m’s for Elly. We opened presents for hours it seemed. The Goblin Child was surprisingly reluctant to rip wrapping paper to shreds. I thought that would have been right up her ally.

Mom and Dad’s house is the perfect Christmas house. It is a beautiful house anytime, only slightly newer than my brothers, nineteen seventeen or maybe nineteen o seven, somewhere around there. They have worked hard at bringing out its character and inner beauty, now, all decorated for Christmas it really shines.

Once done with presents we went back to breakfast. This being one of the few time when mom cooks, she was not only cooking but making us her world famous pancakes. If they aren’t quite world famous they should be. She spreads them thin and with the help of lots of butter and syrup she grills them extra crisp, then folding them in half, fills the center with chocolate chips. Words can not begin to describe the heavenly taste. Of course if we had them more than once a year we would be dead form all the yummy ingredients.

So full we could barely move from a delicious breakfast and exhausted from the excitement I really can’t remember the rest of the morning but I know that at some point we headed for the barn. I hadn’t gotten to see the new horse yet and couldn’t wait. My poor, long suffering husband came along to watch the child and they waited in the heated tack room while we rode. Except for a brief ride with grandma, for the child, not the husband. We did not make use of the beautiful new riding helmet she got for Christmas but fortunately no one fell off so it was hardly needed for this ride at least. We will make good use of it as she gets older and we can ride more.

It started snowing on the drive out and we bravely ventured forth into the rapidly increasing snow for our ride. Indie proved to be just as nice as I had heard. He went along happily if not as speedily as is his usual. We can blame that on the deep snow already on the ground making it hard for them to walk. We enjoyed dashing through the snow and made two laps around the hay field before heading in. The snow was starting to accumulate by then but we didn’t let that deter us from taking a wending rout home so we could see the deer.

Mom boards the horses on the outskirts of Bull Valley an absolutely gorgeous, something, I’m not sure what to call it, not a town just an area containing acreages and horse properties with big beautiful barns and pastures flecked with jumps. The houses are old, big and grand. We drove through the tree lined streets in the softly falling snow. Christmas lights were on shining in the wintery gloaming. The best of all was a pasture inhabited by lit reindeer. The lay on hill sides and leaped though trees, they were even jumping over the road. We slowed and gawked in awe.

If I mention mom’s pancakes I can’t leave out dad’s stew, we dinned on it that night and many others. It was spectacular and filling on the cold winter days. He has become quite the cook.