Christmas at Home!

We've lived in this house now for three years. This will be the first Christmas Eve and Christmas Day that we -the entire family- will spend in it. Every year, for the past five or six (or seven?) years, we've had a standing invitation for holiday dinners at the Hohman's. Elizabeth Hohman and her husband, Bill, live right outside of Wilmington, Delaware -their property/development is actually in Pennsylvania, but they can drive 1/4 mile down the road and be in Delaware. Weird. Anyhow, my wife shares a very distant family relation with Elizabeth. You ready?

Elizabeth is my wife's step-mother's cousin. Therefore, Elizabeth is pure-bred Swede. She's lived with her husband, Bill, in the United States for over 30 years. Bill is an OBGYN. Bill and Elizabeth have three grown sons; Eric, Johan, and Will. Eric and Johan are married. Will was the last time move out of the Hohman homestead just a couple months ago. He and his girlfriend of many years, Katie, found a cute house that they just bought and moved into.

Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas dinners at the Hohman's are always special and always overflowing with good Swedish food, strong Swedish liquor (snaps!), laughter, singing, and good conversations. Although the relation between Elizabeth and my wife is distant and through marriage at best, we are consider part of the Hohman clan and our kids are more like grandchildren to Elizabeth and Bill who, up until the birth of Eric's son, Oliver, a couple months ago, had no grandchildre of their own.

Growing up, it was just me and mom. No extended family, no big dinners, no real holiday traditions. It was always warm, cozy, and intimate though but certainly nothing like we've been experiencing the last couple of years at the Hohman's.

But this year, Elizabeth "moved" Christmas Eve dinner back a couple days to December 20th in order to accomodate everybody's schedule and her husband, Bill. As I said, he's a doctor and, sadly, he'll be working Christmas Eve into Christmas Day.

We went up this past Saturday and had a great time and got to celebrate Christmas with the kids a little early. Bill and Elizabeth always buy them gifts which, of course they HAD to open right then and there.... They even got me a cool wine decanter and a wine book. And my wife got a gift card for the gap and some other goodies.

So we really lucked out this year because, not only did we get to carry on the tradition with the Hohman's, we now can look forward to our FIRST CHRISTMAS EVE AT HOME. We're making a nice dinner in the Swedish tradition and we'll have a few friends over to help us celebrate. And then, for the first time in three years, we'll snuggle down in our own bed with our dogs Woody and Linus (and Miss Kitty too!) and go to sleep and journey into Christmas Day. I'm looking forward to it.

The economy sucks, it's been a rough year financially and emotionally for me, but I still realize how much I have to be thankful for. And I'll tell ya, I'm real thankful to be spending this Christmas at home with my family and NOT on the road.