The Grass Is Always Greener

This year we stayed home for Christmas and planned to celebrate with my husband's family.  My mom and brother also came to celebrate with us- it was a blast!

We spend all of Christmas day at my in-laws house, so I offered to host Christmas Eve dinner to lighten her load and give me and my mom a meal to plan together.

So last Saturday, I woke up early to go to the grocery- with list and coupons in hand.  Then came home and immediately got to work.  The Dallas Cowboys were playing on Christmas Eve and the boys in the group intended to watch, so we planned a menu around "game" food.

I made my mom's chili, Autumn Corn Chowder, two types of cornbread, had a couple of appetizers planned, a plateful of Christmas cookies (all given to me by others), and a sweet potato pie (at my hubby's request). 

It was a full day of cooking, cleaning, and setting the dining room table (which of course was my favorite part).

I used my Christmas Spode (anniversary gifts from my in-laws), green anthro glasses, and silver chargers.

 It was a cute table, even though I anticipated the men in the group to be eating in front of the tv due to the football game.

So... I finished up EVERYTHING, set the DVR to record the game, and we left for a wonderful Christmas Eve service.

We returned about 6:30.  The weather had changed to misty and pretty cold.  We were all hungry and ready to eat.  As we turned into the neighborhood, something felt strange...

It was... totally... utterly... completely... DARK.

Yes, no power. none whatsoever. 

Until we hit our street.  Then (praise the Lord) I saw lights! Yay!! Anxiety drifted away.

Until we turned into our driveway, and I noticed that our house was totally dark.  In fact, our side of the street was totally dark.  Yes, the only lights in the entire neighborhood was the other side of the street.  The one block of houses facing us had light.  (It felt like they were rubbing it in our faces or something.)

Ok... time to go to plan B- get the food, take it to another house and eat. 

One problem, we only took our garage door opener with us, and that wasn't working now.  Yep. We couldn't get in the house.  Lovely.

Fortunately my father-in-law has a set of our house keys at his office, which is just 1/2 mile away. So he left to get the keys, came back, let us in, we loaded up the car with food (I didn't even bother with the appetizers) and headed to my brother-in-law's house.

The beautiful table setting was left to be seen by only YOU! 
and of course, with the power out, the Cowboys game did not get recorded. Which, after hearing the score, was probably a better thing to keep hubby in a better mood all weekend. 

After dinner my mom and I drove back by the house to see if the power was on yet.  It wasn't.  Which led us to say "the grass is always greener on the other side of the road! Or in this case, the lights are always brighter! Literally."

(About an hour later, the lights were back on.  We came home and opened presents and had heat and were able to cook the turkey just fine the next morning.)

It was definitely a Christmas Eve I'll never forget.