Saturday was baking day, this year

 

This was Saturday.  All loaded up to blend, the pre-dough for the baked olive cheese puffs.  The hardest bit done, the kneading and thumb-pressing, etc. followed.

Those cheese balls were foil-wrapped and put into the freezer overnight, but that's not a requirement of the recipe, just a timing thing.  

On Saturday afternoon I got the text message from my sister as she pulled out to head for her daughter's home in Kansas.  As of that time, I would have said we had been very lucky with driving conditions for our holiday season this year.

The oatmeal scotchies were cooling, to be packed up for the Christmas eve gather.

Sunday morning the cheese puffs were popped into the oven and baked.  In between baking the cheese puffs and roasting the brussels sprouts I headed over to medicate and feed my sister's cats.The cheese balls, once baked were also packed up to go to the gather.

The Christmas Eve day gather was wonderful.  Other people brought goodies, too.

Classic sugary treats, home-made and wonderful from my daughter in law and her mom.  They do a lot of cooperative baking.

Something has become a family tradition in a short two years: My daughter in law's cranberry tart for dessert, after the turkey.

Between the meal and the dessert, a new game was tried out.  It's called Game Rover.  Here's the rules:  you must have at least one dog in the house to play.  All the human participants partner with a dog.  A deck of cards is part of the game.  On each card is a task for the dog to do.  There's a little one-minute timer included, too.  Since we had enough people to do it, we had one to tally the points and one to mind the time... because this game can get a little crazy!

Each human has one minute to draw cards from the deck and try to get their partner dog to perform the task/trick on the card.  These vary from "find the treat" to "lick your chops", "touch the wall", "put your nose on your paw", and the standard "sit", "lay down" etc.  There are blank cards in the deck for you to put in custom cards that your pooch knows how to do.  DIL made a card for my combination command for card called "What does a good boy do?"  It's what I tell him so that he will lay down and wait his turn and let me eat my lunch in peace.

For each successful performance of a task, the pair gets a point.  Whoever gets the most points in a one minute "round" wins.

We only had one dog in residence, so all five of us humans were pairing with the same dog.  Nobody was surprised that the pairing of my son with his own dog took the top prize.  His wife (also known as Carl's "mommy") came in second.  I was content to be third.

Lots of laughter ensued as we tried various ways to get Carl to perform.  In the end, the whole game was successful in wearing out the canine.  A tired dog is a good dog!

The evening closed with a challenging round of video game golf.  We made through 10 holes in almost two hours, of this scene that none of us had ever played before.  My son won (as he usually does in video game contests), his wife came in second, and us "old folk" (her parents and I) brought up the distant rear!  But we all laughed a lot, and it was good fun.  We often end such evenings with a video game or film.  

The streets were still good when we drove home.  The forecast called for the temperatures to drop to freezing levels and it to be snowing by morning... and it was right!  We did end up with a white Christmas after all!

My elder sister's friend up the street called from my sister's phone while I was at my son's house to warn us of the forecast.  He volunteered to take care of her kitties on Christmas morning.  I gratefully accepted his offer.  Remember me?  The weather wimp?

The snow is continuing and we're supposed to have 2 to 4 inches by end of today, and there's that icy stuff underneath.  

In other family news, DIL's grandmother lives in a care home across the main drag from that restaurant.  And this morning they got the news that there's Covid in her wing of the residence.  The family had planned on visiting grandma for Christmas Day, but out of consideration for the health situation, won't be doing that.  

So we all examined our inclinations and decided to call off the Chinese Restaurant outing this afternoon and just to stay tucked into our own homes.

Maybe next weekend!

Can anyone even imagine playing Game Rover with a cat?  Prisoner sat here at the door after he'd gone out and right back in, as though asking me to change the weather and open the door for him again!

I hope that all of y'all are having the most meaningful Christmas to you this year.  Different years merit different Christmas observances!  And they are all appropriate.  It's not a competition, thank goodness!

May peace and love, comfort and joy, bless your hearts along with it.

Life is good.  Spark on!