The Modern Journal: It's the hap-happiest time of the year....

CHRISTMAS 2010...nothing but memories, traditions, laughs, stories, presents, family time... The holidays have been something that I have been looking forward to for some time!! I am one of those people that get a case of slight depression during the holidays due to the unknown. Being in the profession that I am, there are times that I have to work the holidays, and those years that depression is even worse! This year, not only did I get off Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but I got off a solid 6 days off!!! I was sooooo excited to get to my hometown of Oakley, KS. This place is magical, only because going back to this place makes my head fill with memories from the time when I didn't have a worry in the world. I hadn't been back to Oakley since my parents July 4th party this summer.
Flying at the butt crack of dawn is not exactly my cup of tea, but all I cared about was getting to KS to spend the as much time as possible with my family. I had to get up at 3am to catch my 5:40am flight!!! Thank goodness I am sleeper when traveling!!!
I spent the first day that I was home with my best friend from high school, Kendra!!! We had so much fun catching up and taking about the good ole days!!! Of course, we went for mexican and maragaritas. When we lived together in Topeka after college, we would watch Christmas movies when it was the season, our favorite was The Polar Express, so that year when I got the movie from Santa, we watched it well into Janurary. So I made sure that I brought the movie back with me and we spent the afternoon chit-chatting and watching The Polar Express!!! I loved the time that I spent with Kendra that day!!! In fact, I love everytime I spend time with Kendra!!!
The night before Christmas Eve, my sister's and I got out our Grandma Honas' recipe for her homemade sugar cookies and made them together!!! Needless to say these cookies were about gone when we all packed up and left, and we made a double batch!!!! They are sooo good and bring back so many memories of Christmas with the Honas'!!!!

Tori and I rolling the dough out and cutting out Christmas shapes!

Jera was in charge of making the frosting! It ROCKED!!!

Christmas Eve is a day full of tradition for our family!!! My Grandpa Honas was a man that is always greatly missed on this day. Him and my grandma were the center of these traditions!!! I can still invision Christmas Eve at their house in the past years, we always had so much fun with all of our extended family. As hard as it is that family dynamics change throughout the years, and those cousins that were once running around excited that Santa found us at grandma and grandpa's grow up, and each aunt/uncle has their own Christmas with their grown children/grandchildren, we always make the best of it. This year, we did all of our Christmas traditions, and even added a few of our own!!! The traditions started with one that we have always had!! Our Aunt Diane always made a cheese dip that she brought to Christmas Eve, I'm telling you that it is the easiest cheese to make, but everytime Aunt Diane doesn't make it, it just doesn't taste the same! This year we wanted cheese dip and we weren't getting together with Aunt Diane, so we made it! It was yummy, but still not Aunt Diane's Cheese Dip!!! One of our new traditions is...CHOCOLATE MARTINIS, well I am declaring it a tradition!!! Mom went to a chocolate party in early Decemeber and bought a chocolate martini mix...it was DELISH!!!!! Mom even drizzled chocolate in our martini glasses!!!!

After I carried some of the food downstairs and set things up, I came back up stairs to get more, and I found my mother drinking her 4th martini!!! She is so much fun!!! The night was filled with her giggles that we all love so much!!!!

Christmas Eve dinner consists of Grandma Honas' famous homemade chicken noodle soup and many appeitizers, complete with goose liver patte!!!! We hung out as a family and stuffed ourselves with all the delicious cheese balls, dips, fried green beans, wings, fried cheese sticks, and soup that my mom spent hours making!!! I believe this is one of my favorite meals of the year!!! I love my grandma's chicken noodle soup, and have since I can remember. I also, love having appeitizers, and my mom makes the best appeitizers EVER!!!! We made a new tradition with this meal...my dad completed his bar in the basement this year and mom put the Christmas tree up in the basement mostly because there is more room down there, but I loved having Christmas in the basement and using Dad's new bar!!!

Mom always puts up a beautiful tree and there is never a year that it doesn't remind me of the trees I see in stores such as Macy's and Dillards!!!

After we eat, we always open Christmas presents!!! As kids, we always said that we had to open presents on Christmas Eve before Santa came during the night so that he would know what we got and wouldn't bring us the same thing!!! God forbid if we got a duplicate!!! My dad had this thing that we open presents in an organized fashion, one person at time and we have a trash sack that everyone puts their trash in before the next person starts. I'm starting to believe that he likes to open one present at a time because most of the time, unless the gift is a electronic or tool, he finds out for the first time what he got us when we open the present!!!! We always open presents from the youngest to oldest, and the youngest has to crawl around the tree and pass out all the presents!!

This year was kind of a special year in that both my sisters and I got another piece of jewerly to add to our sets that mom and dad have been giving to us. When I was 18, mom and dad gave me a pearl ring that I asked for and since then on special occasions I have recieved a piece of pearl jewerly. I now have my set complete with the strand of pearls I recieved this year! Jera, my older sister has been started on black pearls and recieved her black pearl bracelet this year. Tori, my younger sister didn't really have any stone that she liked better than her birth stone because of course it's diamond, so she got a diamond necklace this year!

After all the presents were open we helped mom clean up the food and got ready for midnight mass. With time to kill after opening presents some of us went driving around to look at Christmas lights. When we were little we never spent Christmas in Oakley, we were always driving to one of our grandparents house, so the Sunday evening before Christmas we would open our presents from mom and dad and then go driving around the town and look at Chrismas lights. We always looked forward to this one house that always put a wrecked Santa sleigh and reindeer in the tree in their front yard with a little girl standing at the base of the tree holding her teddy bear crying. It's been years since those people have put that out during the holidays, but we still had a good time looking at lights!!!

We always went to midnight mass when were at Grandma and Grandpa Honas', so we went again this year, and you know, there really isn't anything like it! The Knights of Columbus sang and it was beautiful!!! After mass, we would all go back to Grandma and Grandpa's house and grandma would make breakfast, most of the time the grandchildren never made it that long, but this year we did!!! However, since mom spent all day cooking and would spend all day cooking the next day we went out to a local cafe that is open 24/7 and ate breakfast. We didn't get to bed until 3am, but Christmas Eve was full of our family traditions that we have grown to love so much!!!

Christmas Day came fast since we didn't go to bed until 3am, but we just lounged around and no one got out of their pajamas until noon, including mom and that is definitely out of the norm!!! Of course, Santa found our house and filled our stockings that mom spent hours making for each one of us the year we were born and has added since the brother-in-laws and Nicholas became part of the family! Then it was time to cook!! Mom made a turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, french stuffing, creamed corn, homemade rolls, and apple pie. Jera always has to make the gravy, as my mom has never been able to make gravy!!! After we were all stuffed, it was night full of movies and relaxing!!!!

The day after Christmas we went to Hays, KS to see my grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins!! We all meet at a restrurant and ate lunch and caught up with everyone!!! I love my extended family and spending time with them is always treasured!!!