Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve!

We look forward to getting a "Gigi's Oregonian Christmas Adventure" update whenever one can be supplied. :)

We had a nice Counsell family Christmas on Saturday. It seemed to go much too quickly, but that might be because I slept through the last half of it. ;p I was still exhausted and hadn't yet been able to rest at all since getting home from the hospital so as soon as our active festivities stopped, my body went into hibernation. So for what happened after that, you'll have to look to San Diego.

Before that.... they arrived in the morning, so that they could celebrate with Jordan before he went off to work. We started with a little celebration of Mom & Dad's anniversary before we opened presents and visited. It was a perfect amount of stuff for the kids to open...just a couple toys each. Enough to run and play (which they did) without being overwhelmed with stuff or trash.

We had takeout Chinese for our dinner and joined in a chorus of "Fa ra ra ra ra" before Heath led us in prayer. After dinner is when I lost consciousness so I don't know what else happened.

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Yesterday, we started the day with a tamale-making session at the home of Blake, one of Jordan's best friends who's home on break from Valpo. We whipped out 10 dozen tamales in 2 hours! We took home just 2 dozen which we'll have for our Christmas Eve lunch today. yummy. :)

After making tamales, we came home and gussied up and headed out to the 4:30 showing of the Glory of Christmas at the Crystal Cathedral with the Schmidt. Jake was mostly interested in the pulley systems for the angels, rather than the angels themselves. I caught him using the opera glasses to look backwards at the spotlights instead of the the stage. Jan was sad to see that although the show is exactly the same, the quality of the show has very sadly diminished since Johnnie Carl's death. It was still really cool to watch the sun set as the show progressed and to see the full moon rise looking through the wall. For some reason, looking at the moon keeps making us wistful about wanting to be back in France like last Christmas.

From there we went to The White House- not the one in DC, but the restaurant in Anaheim. It's a lovely gourmet restaurant, that is a white colonial-style house, hence the name. They always bring in snow for the front lawn every Christmas, which Jakie loves, and absolutely drench the whole place inside and out with gold decorations and white lights, which we love. We truly feasted on so much magnificent food, it was a meal to remember, ending with their magnificent Grand Marnier souffle, topped with Creme Anglais and Chocolate Ganache. Now I sound like Mark Sr, recounting our meals for you!

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So this morning is Christmas Eve. Mark is out running with his brother. The boys are asleep together. I will start getting ready for our tamale luncheon. We're all waiting anxiously with Brad & Nika for baby girl X, who is officially due in 1 week. Tonight we will attend Christmas Eve service together and then our traditional fondue dinner.


Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!!!