We still woke up early yesterday, Christmas Eve, for 2 reasons 1.) My husband has work (he works for the government) and 2.) I have a toddler who wakes up on regular hours. My plan for yesterday was to have pancake breakfast at McDonald's (which Evan and I enjoy), go to the gym, go to the nearby Barnes and Noble for a Cheesecake Factory treat to bring to tonight's family dinner and then the grocery store because our fridge was almost empty because of the winter storms we've been having which made shopping with a toddler difficult.

 The family's official christmas card for this year. With the "Let It Snow" text I guess we got our wish huh?

But on some days things don't always go as planned. We did have our breakfast and did manage to go to the gym despite of the strong sleet, but I forgot my gym shoes. Rather than going home I still left Evan to play at the kid's care and spent a few minutes relaxing in the steam room and toyed with my iPod touch afterwards in the lounging area.

With the sleet coming down hard I also scratched the cheesecake plan because it's still about a block and a half walk from the gym and parking was packed as it always is in the downtown area. It turned out the same for the what has been recently-always-almost-deserted grocery store.

What I ended up doing was shoveling our condo building's walkway for one hour. The couple who does the maintainance of our buidling were in California so Tom volunteered to do the shoveling the night before. But more snow came that morning, making the pathways slippery so I did it as my exercise for the day. Besides the slightly wet snow was easier to shovel than when it freezes to ice when the temperatures drop at night. Evan, with the warmer 30'sF temp, truly enjoyed frolicking with the snow for an extended period. He got a lot of physical exercise that morning that he napped for a good 3 hours.

My husband got off early from work, and we went to hear mass at 4:30. Since it didn't make sense to me to prepare a Noche Buena for a diet conscious american husband and a toddler who is usually asleep at midnight, I usually relax this night and order out. And the only restaurants that are open in late Christmas Eve are chinese take-out places. So my husband had pork with garlic sauce and an eggroll, while I had chicken garlic rice. Evan had my homemade grated carrots with ranch dip, edamame, pasta stars with butter and parmesan cheese, 2% milk. He had a fortune cookie and marshmallows (his first time) for dessert.

Since it was a special night we let Evan stay up past his bedtime until he finished the Mulan movie (which he and daddy both enjoyed) until 10:30. I called long distance to the Philippines where I was able to talk to my parents and brother, and Tom spoke with them too.

With Evan in bed, Tom and I watched the movie Recount (Kevin Space) which made my husband want to throw a shoe at the James Baker character. I gave Tom his gift after the movie. It was about 1:30 in the morning that we went to bed.

Our alarm clock in the form of our 2 year old woke us up at 8:00 this morning. Since it was christmas my rules are relaxed, he gets to watch another movie (Peter Pan) early. When he's done he'll be opening his gifts which I think his parents are more excited than him. I'll try to look for dessert recipes with the ingredients I have on hand, but I am not sweating it because according to my husband his sister already has 3 kinds of desserts for Christmas dinner tonight. We will start our close to 1 hour drive this afternoon and be meeting up with the rest of my husband's 30 member strong immediate family. The party's highlight would be the Secret Santa for the kids. And this part of my american christmas is what I always look forward to.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

Currently listening to: The Moth podcast
Currently reading: Red (Amy Goldwasser)
Currently watching: Recount (Kevin Spacey)