it's surprising wise men looked to the horizon

Merry Christmas (as of four minutes ago)! I had a pretty good day, but it was almost entirely in service of getting ready for Christmas instead of celebrating Christmas Eve. I did sleep in, which was a bonus, but I then went straight into food prep. I made twice baked potatoes and ham balls, with a break while the potatoes were doing their first bake to eat a leftover burrito bowl. I made far more potatoes than were necessary for four people for Christmas dinner, but I intend to freeze many of them so that Future Sara (and potentially Future [censored]) will be happy.

I also made more ham balls than necessary - I had decided that, since I had to get the meat grinder out, and since the ham my mom bought was three times as large as necessary, that I would make an extra batch of ham balls and freeze them for future festivities. Getting the grinder out was a bit of a trick, since it required reorganizing the basement (and by that I mean untarping everything that [censored] had tarped when the HVAC project was ongoing). But I found the grinder, made one batch of ham balls and baked them for freezing later, and made another batch to take to my parents'. And then I had approximately fifteen minutes to shower...

And then I went to my parents', dropped the ham balls in my dad's care, and took my mom to Sewal to a Christmas Eve program. Their church closed ages ago, but it's still somewhat maintained, and it was nicely decorated for the festivities. We sang several Christmas songs, heard several others sing solo/group endeavors, and listened to Ross read the Christmas story. It was a nice event and I'm glad we went, despite the rain and soggy roads.

Then we went home, and I talked to my dad until the timer went off on the ham balls - at which point I discovered that the oven wasn't actually working (even though it was on), and the ham balls were nowhere close to done. Luckily, the other batch that I'd made came in handy - [censored] went to town to retrieve it, and we quickly reheated it in the microwave, and they were delish. My mom had made layered lettuce, apricot salad, and sweet potaotes, so it was all tasty.

And then I came home, rebaked the second batch of ham balls to get them to the right temperature, cleaned my kitchen, and embarked on the usual Christmas Eve tradition of wrapping presents with [censored] while listening to ridiculous music. And now I must sleep since the family *insists* on having Christmas morning in the actual morning, like peasants. Goodnight!