OK, so I'm way behind, LOL.

Last weekend we had Christmas at Elery's house. His six adults and a 2 year old was a much different meal than my chaotic Christmas, but it was very nice.

{{gwi:1471445}}

We started with chocolate and peanut butter fudge which I made, some chocolate oatmeal cookies he made and some sesame cookies, gingerbread biscotti and apricot filled butter cookies that we bought in Chicago.

{{gwi:1471446}}

We had some of the italian sausage that we made and I made a salad with fresh spinach, orange segments, walnuts and our home cured pancetta:

{{gwi:1471447}}

{{gwi:1471448}}

We had a really nice beef tenerloin with a port wine reduction. No one wanted the sauce, the beef was good on its own:

{{gwi:1471449}}

Elery made a sweet potato casserole which I liked. I'm not really fond of the sweet brown sugar/pecan/marshmallow type sweet potato casseroles but his had sour cream and cheddar cheese.

{{gwi:1471450}}

I made homemade rolls, some herb/garlic/parmesan bread sticks and a sesame topped version of dinner rolls:

{{gwi:1471451}}

We finished with cheesecake topped with my homecanned sweet cherry jam and a couple of bottles of Elery's own wine, a white zinfandel. Nice label, isn't it? LOL

{{gwi:1471452}}

{{gwi:1471453}}

We came home to find that the driveway was snowed shut, so we shovelled. Here's my helper, with the snowbank already to his shoulders:

{{gwi:1471454}}

It snowed and it snowed. It nearly snowed all over my (only) string of Christmas lights on the front porch! I had to get up at 7 a.m. to shovel the driveway before everyone arrived.

{{gwi:1471455}}

Elery had to go back to work, leaving me to my own "Feast of the 40 Guests". My family Christmas was much different, with final guest count being "only" 37.

{{gwi:1471456}}

My little Monkey Princess came, dressed in her new cream and gold Christmas dress with a fur cape. Elery found her golden elbow length gloves with creamy fur and Ashley let her wear the "trown" that was Ashley's the year she was Miss White Cloud. LOL She was a wonderfully tacky little golden and furry princess:

{{gwi:1471457}}

Her Bruvver was not impressed and didn't want his picture taken, even though I tried to bribe him with fudge.

{{gwi:1471458}}

This is my niece Tracey, with the newest addition. Logan was born early at only 4 pounds, now he's 2 months old and nearly 7 pounds. He's one of the "4th generation" party attendees.

{{gwi:1471459}}

My Mom came with my stepdad, that's him in the white chair behind her:

{{gwi:1471460}}

Dad came with my stepmom:

{{gwi:1471461}}

Makayla showed Grandpa how to dance to "Santa Claus is coming in a Boogie Woogie Choo Choo Train":

{{gwi:1471462}}

My girls bought me an ice cream freezer!

{{gwi:1471463}}

So I made sugarfree frozen yogurt out of my own homemade yogurt, some frozen strawberries and Splenda. It went with the rhubarb pie I made with Splenda since Dad, Stepdad and BIL are all diabetic. Of course, the rest of us had pumpkin cheesecake and pineapple upside down cake, but I did have those sugarfree options and they all got eaten:

{{gwi:1471464}}

{{gwi:1471465}}

I made a pumpkin roll:

{{gwi:1471466}}

Ashley made Death by Chocolate with brownies, chocolate pudding, peanut butter cups and whipped cream, also all eaten:

{{gwi:1471467}}

We had cookies and fudge, spinach dip and a cheese ball:

{{gwi:1471468}}href="http://s18.photobucket.com/albums/b110/annie1992/Family/Christmas%202007/?action=view&current=100_3030.jpg"; target="_blank">{{gwi:1471469}}

{{gwi:1471470}}

Ashley saw someone here made hearts with candy canes filled with white chocolate, so she made some of those. The kids ate them all, I was amazed. I always have candy canes hanging around until Easter, when I throw them out!

{{gwi:1471472}}

Finally, we made Bruvver happy. My Dad gave him a Tonka grader that had been in his toy collection for about 40 years. It looks brand new, but is one of the old metal ones. Even Bud won't be able to destroy this one!

{{gwi:1471474}}

Funny how I got no pictures of the "real" food. As I got the stuff on the buffet, it got eaten, no time for pictures. I just fed them and got out of the way!

Annie