Turned out to be a pretty nice Christmas. Not the weather. With the rain, late afternoon fog & dropping temps, it wasn't anything close to a white Christmas. My sister had to work(she's a nurse), so our celebration didn't start until evening, when she & I sat down to our mother's roast beef dinner. I hadn't been looking forward to the menu, but the roast was extremely lean & everything was cooked through & very tasty. My sister was chatty & my mom was making an effort not to be grumpy.

     Then we moved to the tree to open gifts. My sister loves to shop, it doesn't matter who for, so I got a ton of stuff from her. Books, pajamas(dogs & penguins), a CD, all placed in cute gift bags with puppies on them. My mom gave me lots of nice things too; DVDs, slippers, a German Shepherd pup calendar, etc. It was a great haul, if a little heavy on apparel. My mom is difficult to buy for, having no interests or hobbies, but she does like word search puzzles. So anytime I saw a book of them, I grabbed it, ending up with 6 of them to give her, some nearly as thick as telephone directories.She laughed as she opened one after another. My sister loves castles, so each year I buy her a calendar of them, pairing it this year with a thick book on Gothic architecture that she wanted. She likes old movies as well, so she found  Fred Astaire & Judy Garland DVDs under the tree.

    Everyone stayed in a good mood, there were no arguments & we had a nice holiday for a change. The novelty was almost as pleasant as the day.