Christmas Eve 2011

Christmas Eve started out with Mike and I making a cheesecake.  This is Mike's thing but he was leaving soon for Susanville to spend the Eve with his Dad and other siblings, so I did the crust.  I noticed that the flat bottom on the spring form pan didn't lay as flat as usual and I pushed it down as best I could but didn't think much more about it.  After it had been cooking for about a half hour the smoke alarm went off and smoke was pouring from the oven.  I couldn't imagine what this liquid was on the bottom of the oven because I had made cookies earlier and hadn't noticed anything.  Anyway, bottom line, I had to keep cleaning the oven and turning the oven off and on.   (Michael had left by now  and it was for me to finish!!)  I guess it was seepage from the cheesecake but it was clear and tasted like nothing.  We will see today whether it even completely cooked, whether it is too dry or what.  Oh, yes, and it did crack horribly on the top.  This is a no, no, for a good cheesecake. 

Then Lea called and asked if I had seen the movies of them skiing at Deer Valley and I then watched four movies of them skiing.  When I talked to Kelsi she said her Mom was teaching her to ski and she was just whizzing down it looked like.  And Jimmy went whizzing past her.  This was their first time skiing ever.  Yesterday they did the bottom of the hill for learning.  Kelsi said you just make your skis like a slice of pizza and go down.  No Fear, that girl!!  Lea looked good in her white jacket and Camber was on the sidelines skiing down looking lovely in a white ski outfit.

What did I eat, my favorites, I cooked a butternut squash and mashed it up well with lots of butter, had salami and cheese on a roll, and summer sausage and cheese on Ritz crackers with diet root beer and finished it off with peppermint ice cream, homemade ginger cookies and cinnamon bears.  Yes, the diet starts on Monday.

I watched "It's a Wonderful Life" which I hadn't seen in years and forgetting I had it on Roku I watched the longer version with all the commercials and that lasted until past midnight with stopping for phone calls from Maria and Linda and looking at both my Christmas books (from 1961 to 2010) and reading all the cards I had sent over the years.  Some of them were some pretty good poetry and some were pretty messy but it certainly gave me a time capsule of my life.  It was a pretty good life according to the Christmas cards.

Three observations:

1-In a Christmas card I had had the children draw Christmas pictures on and reprinted when Jimmy was 3, Maria 6, Linda 7 and John 9, John had drawn a little balloon over Baby Jesus with a line down to him as if this is what He was thinking about and in the balloon  was a drawing of the Crucifixion!!!!!  I wonder if I really noticed that before and asked him about it.  Amazing how children's minds work.   Linda had a very neat drawing of the Nativity scene and she said she remembered being very disappointed because she thought they were going to be printed in "The Children's Friend"!!!  Maria had a Santa Claus and Jimmy had something that looked like the manger.  Interestingly I just read that the manger would not have been wooden as has always been depicted, but it would have been made of stone.  In fact it said Joseph was not a carpenter but a stone mason!!!

2-In our 1981 card there was a picture of Meagan when she was around 1 year old and she had a big smile and showed her teeth which looked so much like Keira's Christmas picture.  Meagan had a little more hair but other than that, very similar.

3-After my 1997 card telling about the death of Richard at Thanksgiving time 1996 there was a beautiful letter from Sherry expressing her gratitude for living with us so long and everything Richard had done for her and expressed some  beautiful sentiments about him.   It was sad thinking they have both passed away.  In the 2004 card I didn't specifically address the death of John except as a byline, it was as if I thought everyone already knew about it.  I thought that was strange.

The Christmas cards also helped me to get straight in my mind when I had traveled where with SBA,  I do get those trips and years confused in my mind.

All in all,  it was not a lonely Christmas Eve sitting by the fire but it passed almost too quickly, just as my life passed too quickly as I viewed it through my Christmas cards and pictures.

Christmas in San Diego