hip, hip, hooray for Christmas Vacation!

I seriously love National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation :) I never saw it as a kid/teenager but it was one of the Olson family faves so I now have it on my official "must-see Christmas movie" list. We all love it! Other movies on our must-see list:

* Elf

* A Christmas Story (another one we never watched as kids. I actually refused to watch it with Eric for a few years because I thought it looked so stupid. Now I love it! The kids love it too)

* Mickey's Christmas Carol

* The Santa Clause

* Bad Santa (for us... NOT the kids!)

We always watch more movies than that but these are the MUSTS in our family!

Anyway, tomorrow is Christmas and our family is hosting the big get-together at our house this year. This always makes me happy... and stressed! The stress is just part of who I am and I just deal with it and it's always worth it but for a few days before Christmas I feel on the brink of a break-down.

So what's been going on lately? Well, I have been baking up a storm and it seems that all my treats disappear far too quickly. I keep meaning to give some away but then they are all so good that we just keep eating until there are only a measly few left and not enough to gift away! I made a ton of fudge and little turtle pretzels last night that solved my dilemma and today got a few goodie trays and tins put together for gifting to friends and loved ones. I made plain chocolate, chocolate with toasted walnuts, toffee crunch, and mint.

Today I have been in the kitchen nearly the entire day and I see no end in sight over the next few days! I do enjoy being in the kitchen but it would be far more enjoyable if I didn't have kids hovering over everything I do! Love my kids but right now I need them to wander off and play somewhere else! On todays agenda was a yummy breakfast of eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast, prepping the cinnamon roll dough and pans, chicken dumpling soup for supper, and some yummy homemade granola for my niece who will be here tomorrow!

Speaking of tomorrow, the plan is to do cinnamon rolls in the morning, leftover soup for lunch, and maybe homemade pizza for supper. We'll see about that last one. In between I need to prep dishes for Sunday's dinner which will be the big Christmas dinner since Saturday is a day of travel for our out of town visitors and we thought it would be best to do the big meal on Sunday.

Sunday's dinner will be cherry citrus glazed ham, creamy herb potatoes, gingersnap sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls, asparagus, and pumpkin pies. Yummm...

So tomorrow is Christmas and I am ready for the kids to get those presents open! I think I did a great job this year of not only getting great deals but making sure that those great deals were on things that the kids would actually enjoy. Most of the gifts are fun AND educational in nature. We only got one small item for each of the girls that were frivolous. I found lots of fun things for our homeschool and I'm excited to start using them!

Well, I better get going. I have so much more I want to write and pictures to post but I am just too tired and still have so much to do!

Make each day count!