The Share Your World questions for today are:

What will you be eating today?  I cooked a spiral-cut ham and made sangria. I also bought a pecan pie. My friend  Brad brought a Caesar salad and cheesy potatoes made in his crockpot. Larry and Elizabeth and Kathy brought a green bean casserole and buñuelos and Dianne brought a mocha flan cake and tres leches cake. 

What was your favorite gift? Elizabeth brought us all tea towels from her line of Indian-created clothing and house goods. She also gave me a wonderful book bag and cosmetic case but my very favorite was an incredible large hand-embroidered silk scarf that is simply stunning. It is large enough to make a blouse out of, but the problem is which side to present on the outside as both sides are incredible and each is a different color. Perhaps I’ll have to have it made reversible.  I’ll show a photo of it tomorrow.

Do your pets get to join in with the fun? My dogs are very very naughty when it comes to guests. They just go a bit crazy, so I put them in the lower garden. (Not the lot below, as they can easily escape from it.). This they did not like, and voiced their protests. Then my friend brought her very large German Shepherd and after a few warning barks and growls, we let her in with my banshees and they seemed to get along all right, but during the day, especially when it was feeding time, it got complicated. I must take them for obedience training or have them take me for obedience trining.  I actually gave them all doggie tranquilizers given to me by their vet, but I didn’t see that it made much of a difference.

Gratitude: For my friend Brad who usually furnishes the solution to my problems and who brought a wall mount for the echo he brought me for the bedroom a month or more ago (which we still haven’t gotten installed) and a scraper to replace what he considers to be my substandard one. (Forgetting that he had already replaced it earlier, but no problem,  because who doesn’t need two good kitchen scrapers?)

Also, gratitude for the good conversation and the contribution to the meal by my friends.

What is the worst bit, if any, about celebrating?  The dishes, but luckily everyone listened when I said I would rather spend our time talking and would not let them help.  When they left, I put away the food, cleared off the table and rinsed off all the dishes and piled them in the sink and on the counter. An hour or so later, I emptied the dishwasher of yesterday’s clean dishes and filled it with our comida dishes, then washed the rest by hand. I used my wooden-handled good flatware, so washed all of it by hand, as well as the fragile wine goblets and my favorite square sangria glasses. Actually, in the end it was very satisfying to end up with the job finished. I have a sneaking suspicion that Yolanda will show up tomorrow since I wouldn’t let her come either Xmas Eve or today…and it  will be fun to see her reaction when she sees I did it all.

After the Celebration!

(You can enlarge photos by clicking on them.)

And now, at 2 AM and 8 hours after the main event—to all a good night!!!

(I know. Very strange to show everything after cleanup rather than during the event, but it wasn’t until afterwards that I actually had time to take photos!)