A Christmas Miracle!

This past weekend was all about Christmas party prep since we're hosting the extended family this year. We finished gift wrapping, planned the menu, bought all the groceries we needed, and the last chore was shoveling the snow off the sidewalk in front of our house. We had done it once but then it snowed again, covering over all our work and we hadn't touched it since. Can't have that when there are 24 people showing up tomorrow (more on that later). But then two miracles simultaneously happened: (1) the weather warmed up to low 50s or so, encouraging the ice-hardened snow to melt and (2) a little Cat snow plow showed up and dug out the entire length of sidewalk in front of our house and 3 others!

We suspect that one of our neighbors had a friend that came over and did the plowing. At first I was wondering why there was a truck making all that racket on a Sunday morning, beep beep beeping as it backed up. When I got up to check it out my jaw dropped and I was so excited--seriously, that saved me probably 40 minutes of work, at least. Woo hoo!

As for the number of guests, originally it would have been the usual 18 family members (immediate family plus aunts, uncles, cousins, and their kids). But then we invited the H family over because they don't have family in town, except that MH's mom ended up coming to visit and will be here for a few weeks. Then my godmother apparently doesn't have anywhere to go this year so she and her boyfriend are coming over. That's +6 = 24 people total. I sure hope there's enough food to go around!

I'm breaking a holiday food rule and trying out three brand new recipes tomorrow, all in the CrockPot. I'll have to report back on how it all goes. At the very least I finished most of dessert-type baking this afternoon (cookies, brownies, Rice Krispy treats) so at least there will be sugary sweets to tide people over ;) Wish us luck tomorrow! And Merry early Christmas!