Christmas Eve Lulu and I took off for early service at the Stowe Church. There was no way I was going to make it to Eleven and Emmie and I had butted heads more than once over the past few days. She was trying hard to get the Lobster Bisque just right and I was trying to get the house ready for guests I didn’t really know. Emilie had a bit of ‘tude to say the least and I was heading into a lupus flare up. Em had taken off and cousins showed up for a visit and I was a bit miffed with the fact she had left while they were on their way. How rude. So some readjustment needed to happen and Lulu and I headed to church while Em waited for her guests. That was a good thing.
On the way there Lulu and I saw three young ladies trying to hitch from Shaws market into Stowe. Incredibly dark and not a good place to be trying to get a ride. We swung around and called out to them. The girls were on visas from Peru and were working up at Stowe Mt. Lodge. They had taken the bus down to the market to get Christmas day meal makings and found the market closed for the evening. They asked about Church and the service times and talked about how they all missed their mothers and how they were going to call them when they got back up the mountain. Lulu and I had been early, so by the time we drove up and back down the mountain road we were in perfect time for the service, which was lovely.
Back to the house and Em’s guests had arrived. Lobster Bisque for all and thanks to Lili for a support phone call to Em while sister and I were out at Church. She helped calmed the storm.
Emmie had invited Kenny here, so Kenny’s father Wendell came too. He lives with Kenny in NH and is part of the package. Emilie calls him Sunshine because he is such a grump. And he really is. “I am rude, crude and socially unacceptable, and I like that way and I am not gonna change”, says he. Trucker, ex Diablos member and very opinionated. (Ain’t we all?) But he managed to drink his coffee from my grandmother’s Wedgwood without breaking it. So he got points all around.
Jared, Kenny’s younger brother, came too. We call him Puddy and he is a bit of a rough stitch. He makes really funny faces says really random things at really odd times. Sometimes understandable, sometimes unintelligible. Funny none the less. “Well fire it up!” was heard more than once.
Christmas morning we were 6, all up and having tea and coffee and opening stocking type things in the dining room. We all managed to get cleaned up in time for more guests to come for breakfast. Round one.
When I was little, my grandparents always had guests at the Christmas table. Folks who were not able to be with their families for one reason or another, so in this tradition I invited the family that owns Lui Lins Chinese restaurant in town. Guozhen, Tongmei and their son Henry. Tongmei said that in the 10 years that they have lived in this country, no one had ever invited them to a holiday meal. They were able to come for breakfast, only because it was the only time they didn’t have the restaurant open. Hardest working folks I have met in a long time. They seemed to enjoy themselves here and liked the house. Breakfast now done by 10:30. Round 2.
When our breakfast guests left, the boys headed out to see friends up in Eden and the girls and I went over to Sue and Judith St. Aubin’s with a tenderloin roast ready for the oven. St. Jude lectured me about missing her choir sing at Holy Something or Other’s, but then I showed her the roast and got her to ease off. Lili was there too, so a quick cup of coffee and visit, then back for round 4. Lulu did a really good job with the roast, Yorkshire pudding and green bean casserole considering the stove cooks too cool. She pulled off the timing of the meal beautifully and some man will thank me that I taught my daughter how to cook a tenderloin roast.
Hanna, one of Emilie’s oldest buddies came by too, some unfinished business with Puddy who she had met over the summer. Puddy had gone out Christmas Eve and walked to her house 4 miles away and then ran all the way back, which explained why Jewel had woken me and Lulu up well after midnight .
Hannah stayed a bit for dinner, round 4 done. Em and her crew headed out for New Hampshire and Kenny’s mother’s house. Quiet for me and Lulu a very short time. Round 5 was Lulu’s best, best, best friend Jesse and her mum Jenny and my friend William. Relaxing after a long day and chatting over knitting and a bit of spinning and wine and more Bouche Noel from Joyce. That butter cream frosting just could not be matched anywhere. 
The end of the day and the quiet of the house was wonderful. Nothing better to be done in this new home of mine and most tavern like with all the friends, old and new, coming and going throughout the day. The best part of the Christmas celebration was in fact the actions and the relationships formed over meals. No one really had any money for gifts, so there were very few. But we were rich, beyond words because the love and friendship in this home was in abundance. And isn’t that the point of the whole thing?
Then he mentions that he has been in Aussie land for the past 12 years, via Nova Scotia, and he has been studying SHEEP. and and and better than that, Merinos. Yes Merinos and then he tells me that he wants to bring Meat Merinos to the Miller farm, now that the cows are gone. Well…. now we are talking! He talks a bit about working with a flock that had an 11 micron wool clip, he talks about developing vaccines to reduce methane production in sheep…. and wants to do the same at UVM. And I want in.
