Merry Christmas Eve Eve

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Today is the day before the day before Christmas or, as my students would say, Christmas Eve Eve.

We celebrated a mini-Christmas last night with a delicious meal of chicken Parmesan and risotto made by Son 1 and a present exchange of just the presents for and from Son 2's significant other as she is leaving today to join her family for Christmas proper.

If you count the small gifts I gave each of my students and the generous gifts many of them gave me, this made the fifth gift exchange I had been a part of this Christmas Season. The first two happened on the same day, last Saturday. In the morning was our extended family gift exchange - a dirty Santa party. I got very lucky and brought home a Christmas themed street lamp decoration.


Later that day, the missus and I attended another dirty Santa Christmas party for our camping club. The first gift I chose was stolen, as was the second gift. While both were nice and I would have been happy to have either, I lucked out with my third and last choice - select goodies from a country store including delicious cheeses, tasty candies, and spiced pecans.

On the last Friday of school, I received a plethora of wonderful gifts from my students and their parents. Some were home baked food items, some were gift cards, and others were items such as coffee mugs and a Yeti cup. The Yeti cup is a large one, personalized with my name, and came with a Starbucks gift card.

When all the kids were gone home for the holidays that Friday, we had our staff party. This was a Secret Santa rather than a dirty Santa. My Secret Santa turned out to be a good friend who, knowing I love to read, gave me a reading lamp.

Son 2's significant other, as has become our tradition, gave me unique and special roasts of coffee. She is a fellow coffee lover.

Without going into detail, I will say the gifts I gave were commensurate with the gifts I received.

Now, there is one more big Christmas gift exchange to look forward to, the "official" Christmas morning event. There will be four of us here for it, the missus, Sons 1 and 2, and me.


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