My, but we love company!!!

We had a glorious Christmastide this year, with dinner company several times throughout the period between Christmas Eve and the Epiphany. I just thought it would be nice to share a few pictures, courtesy of my "photographer" guest and friend since we were both nine years old, Rae Lee. At this particular gathering, she, her husband, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren came for a Turkey dinner. Another guest, a young veteran of Iraq and my oldest son's friend, Jeremy, was also in town and able to join us. Too bad my oldest is himself in the Middle East at present, but we hope to see him back in the States soon. I hope you enjoy these. Below is the crowd at the December 30th gathering. What we usually do is set up all the food on my long counter and usually the stove top, then have everyone fill their plates and sit in the dining room (old folks), kitchen (young folks) with couches in the family used for the overflow, if any. I would love to have a room large enough for a table that could seat 20, but we have to make do with this arrangement. There were 13 of us at this meal. Christmas Eve, we do a traditional Italian seafood dinner and our neighbors come and bring part of the dinner. This year we had 16 on Christmas Eve. We started early, around 5, had our dinner, cleaned up, then they went home so we all could rest a bit, before attending Midnight Mass together. I am in the choir this year and was very thankful to be able to sing at

Midnight Mass. I think I probably got to bed around 3 a.m. Christmas morning,

but it was glorious. We always leave our outside lights and decorations on all night on Christmas Eve, and I always have to go outside before I retire for the night and just gaze at our lighted nativity scene, which seems especially beautiful on that night. I hope to get some more pictures posted soon.