Charlie has arrived!

Lots of flurrying at our house these past few days.  Not the kind of flurries that bring snow with them.  More the kind that bring visitors and Christmas elves and, day before yesterday… Charlie!  There’s been laughing and talking and going out to dinner.  And, of course with all the extra fun comes hurrying and scurrying to get presents wrapped and food prepared and everything in readiness for the big day ahead.

Actually for us, Christmas is very much a two-day affair — our traditional baked oysters according a my great-grandmother Julia Espy’s recipe followed by opening the gifts that have miraculously appeared under our tree.  And then on Christmas Day, turkey and all the trimmings in late afternoon followed by dessert in front of the library fire and, if we are not completely undone by then, snacks in the kitchen in the pitch of the night.

Baked Oysters a la Great Grandma Julia

This year, our wonderful friends, Susan Waters and Randal Bays and their boys Owen and Willie will join us for Christmas dinner — first time we’ve been all  together in more than two years I think.  (And we were so sure, when they moved to Olympia that we’d absolutely be in one another’s pockets because of the proximity!)

I hope that every single friend and acquaintance and everyone reading this Eve-of-Christmas-Eve blog is experiencing similar flurries and scurries and excitements of the season.  As my mother would have said, “It’s simply what should be happening in the best of regulated households!”  Which was usually a pronouncement made after a major incident or disaster along the way.  Like the time Aunt Dora dropped the roast and one of the little boys in the household happened through the kitchen about then and…  but that’s another story.  Maybe for tomorrow.