Merry Christmas.

 It was a nice Christmas. Quiet. Tim and I had the morning to ourselves. We opened our gifts to each other and the gifts from our son and daughter in law. 

My oldest granddaughter was a great secret agent. She got the wrapped gifts from their hiding place in the guest room downstairs and under their tree with no reminders needed. 

It was a good Christmas morning. We spoke briefly but the girls were far too wound up to talk long. 

My daughter and son in law came with William. They brought a beautiful greenery arrangement and gifts, and opened their gifts from us. William was pleased. He had mentioned something he really wanted, probably back in mid-October. He doesn't appear to have given it a second thought. He was a happy kiddo when he opened it.

Our daughter across the pond gave us a five day vacation to Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. She swears she had travel points and coupons. I hope so. It was an extravagant gift. Tim and I haven't taken a real vacation in years. We are talking about perhaps adding a week to the trip and touring the upper peninsula of Michigan.  So that was a happy conversation.

We had our quiet ham supper. 

Tomorrow they are calling for a catastrophic ice storm predicted to last 17 hours. Tim had pretty big plans for the day, but I think I convinced him that we need to stay close to home. Downed trees and widespread power outages on top of the dangerous roads. 

I chopped up some ham and made a small pot of bean soup in the crock pot. It the power does go out, we have plenty of candles for light. The heat is gas, and we haven't had any problem with that since Tim replaced the regulator. I think the best place to weather this storm is right from our own warm house. If we lose power, I can just take the crock of soup and sit it on top of the heating stove in the basement.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas at your house. It was a memorable one here.