Happy Crimbo too all at Gotmead..........

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I opened presents with my boyfriends sister's at 1:30 in the morning, crashed for about 5 hours, drove an hour to open presents with my niece, went to my parents, opened presents with them, opened brother's family presents when he came over, everyone ate dinner...then I passed out on the couch because that was tooooo much on too little sleep!
 
Family -L-O-V-E-D- my JAO :)

We drank waaaayyyy too much aquavit.. aakavit? moqaa.... Distilled caraway seed alcohol

My daughter is lucky to be coming home since she charmed the socks off all the realatives so well! :-D
 
We had a traditional Nowegian Christmas Eve dinner, complete with lamb, mashed carrots and rutabagas, riskrem, and yes, aquavit. It was vile, bit it's tradition!

Fortunately we had a traditional American breakfast, including tamales.
 
...It was vile, bit it's tradition!

Our Christmas eve dinner was originally Norweigan, and still carries many of the traditional foods, Stollen, Yulecaca, Pickled Herring, pickled Pigs Feet, Smoked Salmon, and many many many of the breads and cheeses that I can't even think of right now.

As our family has grown however, we have brought in new ethnic foods, Italian Calamari, Greek Hummus & Pita bread, Japanese cucumber salad, Scottish Haggis.

Fortunately we had a traditional American breakfast, including tamales.

By the time we make it to the fourth course no one can hardly eat the Swedish meatballs on x-mas eve. I've learned to appreciate them as a delicious cold breakfast Christmas morning :-D
 
Well, now the main event is over and done, I'm hoping to get my 2 seasonal batches started over the next day or two.........

A double batch of Chocolate Raspberry port (kits) and a batch of "Christmas pudding" flavour wine.

I won't be going home for a couple more weeks, but I hope to get some of WayneB's Christmas spice going when I get home to give away next year.
 
For Christmas dinner, we had perogies made by my Irish descended sis in-law, Rot Kohl (german red cabbage), ham, turkey, green beans, and an English Trifle prepared by my German mother in law, and I impressed the Germans (aunt, uncle and cousins) with my Stollen (thank you, Joy of Cooking, you almost got it right). There were 15 of us in the house and 14 of us made it out on the frozen lake for a snowball fight and snowmen and snow angels the morning after an evening of drinking mulled wine, mead, jello shooters, Screech, Jaegermeister, rum and beer... then in the afternoon all the cousins (8 of us) got out the .22's and shot up a bunch of beer cans and some old playing cards my father in-law mounted on a sawhorse. I'm not quite sure what that says about my family, but it sure was fun!!