Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope you all have a wonderful day with your families and friends.  I feel very blessed to have been able to come to Muscat and share Christmas with my family.  When Joseph moved from Houston, Texas to Dubai in 2007 he told us it would be unlikely that he would be home for Christmas again until he moved back to the US or Canada.  Christmas is a very stressful,  hectic, and weather uncertain time to travel and, being literally half the world away from us in Western Canada it would likely not be a very enjoyable journey.  He did come home in 2009, bringing his then girilfriend/now wife Carrie for a vist.  That is the only time in the last eight years we have all been together at Christmas.

John and I were thrilled that Joseph and Carrie were happy to have us come visit them for Christmas this year, and being able to bring Trish with us was a wonderful bonus.  To have all of those most dear to me together for the holiday has been very special and I enjoyed my Christmas Day in Oman very much.

We all wandered into the kitchen by 8:30 or so.  Joseph made scrambled eggs with green onion and red pepper (very fesitvely appropriate colors) and bacon (which cost $18 per pound in Oman) for breakfast.  After tiding up the kitchen we settled into the livingroom to open our gifts.

With impeccable timing we finished just in time to put the turkey in the oven.  We discovered that there was not a dish in the cupboards large enough to cook it in so John and Joseph headed to the store to buy one.  John actually took the dish they thought would be an adequate size to the meat department and put a turkey in it to be sure ours would fit.

While the bird cooked we played Russian Rails, a new game we gave Joseph and Carrie for Christmas, and again, with impeccable timing Joseph won just as the turkey finished roasting and we all set to in the kitchen putting the rest of our dinner together. Quarter to six saw us all sitting around the dining table to a feast of turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, whiskey glazed carrots, brussel sprouts, coleslaw and biscuits.  No one left the table hungry!After dinner I requested that everyone humour me for a family photo before the turkey coma set in .  Then John, Carrie and Joseph settled on the couch to watch a movie, Trish went to her room to message with her friends and I settled on the upstairs couch to write my blog.  It was a really wonderful, stress free, happy day.  Thank you family.

 From my family to your family, Merry Christmas. God bless you all on this special day.