Flashback: Christmas snapshot

Christmas morning started off with poop all over the house (Eileen), runny noses and extra guests; one who had stayed the night and another who showed up for the daytime fun. I woke up feeling pretty exhausted after another night fraught with fussy and crying children. Sometimes I feel like us all being in the same room is slowly killing us; mostly through sleep deprivation. After a few minutes of wallowing, I prayed hard for a good attitude and forced myself to smile and talk gently despite what I felt like. The results were actually quite good. I managed to get the poop cleaned up, feed the girls breakfast, light the charcoal stove, “preheat” the Dutch oven and have the cinnamon rolls set to rise all before 9am. The girls opened their stockings which had nothing but biscuits in them since Jim is not coming until sometime this month (we think) with our “real” gifts. Orcxance stuffed my stocking with matches, a tin of coffee and some cookies, and gave me a brand new hot water thermos. The one we purchased for Molly’s layette had all but fallen apart. The cinnamon rolls turned out great and tasted exactly right! It was kind of a miracle because I did the recipe without measuring cups or spoons, as those have disappeared over time. Molly had fun helping me roll the dough and spread on the filling. We used sweetened condensed milk as the glaze, which tasted almost the same as real glaze. We were lucky to have eggs so we completed the meal with scrambled eggs.