A McVal Christmas Vacation

 I was on vacation last week!!!  

No one at my office remembered...  Well, ok... to be fair, they did and were VERY apologetic for calling me so many times each day.  Crisis arose that had NEVER reared their ugly heads before.  Why would someone TRY that the day before Christmas Eve???!  

What a mess.  I'm, at this moment, deleting over 3200 emails that the said mess generated...  ugggg....

Anyway, it was a very nice Christmas for the McVal family.  Robb and I attended/recorded the Christmas Eve service on Thursday night.

Between office calls, I managed to finish all but 1 of the sweatshirts I made for each of the kids and their loves.  And Maddy's only needed the collar and top stitching...  Got it done Saturday night.

Here is my huge mistake that I made...  I showed it to my sewing ASG group on FB and they laughed and laughed!  Then one that I go to church with asked me on Christmas Eve, "what was wrong with it?"  Ummm... it's perfectly symmetrical and the boobs are outlined...

you just can't "unsee" it.

Thankfully I had a lot of this fabric so I recut it.  Can't have Maddy be too embarrassed to wear it in public...

As per my new tradition, while I sewed I watched all the Bob Hope Christmas specials that I could find of him performing for the troops back in the 70s.  

What a bittersweet memory of watching them with my dad.

I also got the Christmas letters 95% out the door on Christmas Eve.  Whew! What a rush! I'll show you my little trick I did some other time for the return address.

We'd mailed 90% of Maddy and Matthew's gifts a week ago Saturday and they actually arrived in time!  Yay for USPS!!!  or was it UPS?  Don't remember.  It was a blur.   So Yay UPS too!  The rest of their gifts that finally got done are packaged up and waiting in the car to ship out today.

Maddy and Matthew were on the big screen, via DUO, while we opened presents on Friday morning.  

Zola is modeling the dog coat I made specifically to her measurements.  It's long enough now to cover her butt!!!  She's a LONG dog...

Robb had rigged up a camera so they could see us too, but the lens wasn't a wide lens and they could just mostly see Meri and Shub unless you sat on the ottoman and opened your gifts from them.

I walked past the camera several times, not only to show off my smashing new knit dress that is now my pjs but to check on the turkey.  SO COMFY!  I bought Meri one too so later in the day when she'd spilled something on her pretty sweater, she changed into it.

TWINSIES!

I had given Robb an indoor turkey fryer and was a bit nervous about that much hot oil in the house cooking...  Apparently the instructions were right when it said "Don't use an extension cord" because the temp didn't get past 189 before the machine just turned itself off.  Ten minutes later, it was 181...  Ummm  I need 375 before I can put the turkey in!!!  So I moved it to the hall floor and just plugged it into wall directly...  The cord is like 8 inches long. So what if it damages the floor!  

It didn't...

It turned out REALLY good.  I saved the oil and we'll be doing that again soon.

Ooh!  I got a wood chipper!!!! 

Not for this...  But for my composting efforts!!!  yay!  I'll be a homesteader yet and live off the land I tell you!!!  Well, after I get back from Wendys.

The kids liked their shirts and other items.  Shub even wore his to go visit Meri at one of her night jobs.  It was like ten degrees outside and he didn't even need a coat! 

I may lengthen the sleeves for him with a cuff or something.

 Leon wore his for a while and took it off saying, "Oooh it's WARM..."  

Here's Leon's before it was hemmed.

Will share our Christmas letter tomorrow.  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!