Christmas Morning Candids

Senna expressing his Christmas enthusiasm to everyone but especially to the camera.

I was up early (nothing new there) to prepare the Christmas goose while listening to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

The goose was mostly a success. I’ll relate that story in another post. While the goose cooked and the sticky bun dough rose in the bread machine, I drove to north Leavenworth and retrieved great-grandfather Dan for a day of family fun, food and napping. Once I got back home, Rachelle and I had to scramble to compose the sides and roll out the sticky buns (because the goose was already cooked!). We finally got everything in the oven or rising and proceeded to open presents.

After all the presents were opened, we sat down to Christmas lunch (way too early to call it dinner) with roast goose, apple parsnip sausage stuffing, roasted brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes and gravy composed of rendered goose fat rue , with sticky buns hot out of the oven for dessert. While nearly everyone else napped, I washed dishes. Around four o’clock, I woke Derek up so we could take some family group photos.

Without a tripod it was a bit of a challenge to get myself into the photo, but I improvised and the above photo is the best of the lot. A few other posed portraits follow:

There are so many good photos! But I only shared a few here. We had a great week together. The house was full. So much food (and so many dishes!). So much fun. But now, I’m sad. Derek, Royna and Senna left just after six o’clock this morning to drive south back to Texas. Very early tomorrow morning (between three and four o’clock in fact), I’ll be driving Rachelle to the airport for her return flight to the Pacific Northwest. When I return home tomorrow, Terry, Lexy and I will be rattling around in a nearly empty quiet house.

We will miss you all, especially the littlest Moss of all (for now).