Wine Down: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a bird dog. The stockings were hung by the faux fireplace with care, in hopes that bottles of wine soon would be there...

Rather than continuing to exercise my sorority skills at taking the words to something and changing them around to relate to myself, I'll just recap what actually happened on Christmas Eve at my house. Last year, Jared and I went down to the Keys to spend Christmas with his family, but this year Jared and I were able to host Christmas in our house. It was truly "A Roche Family Christmas", there are even t-shirts to prove it :)

My Christmas Eve began with cleaning my house, which is absolutely my favorite thing to do in the entire world...not. Jared was up bright and early to go quail hunting with my dad and brother, leaving me to get the house ready for the in-laws to arrive. I also had to brave the crowds at publix to do some last minute shopping, which was definitely a dumb move on my part. Gina and Erika finally arrived in the late afternoon, but I was already on my way out the door to begin my Christmas Eve festivities.

My parents and I started off the evening by visiting our cousins, the Simonettas, at their house for hors d'oeuvres and cocktails. Everyone else would join us later at our next Christmas Eve party. After enjoying some drinks with the Simonettas, they had to go to church service and we had to move on to our next party.

Every year, the English family throws a Christmas Eve party at their house which we always attend. So my parents and I made our way over to Deerwood after leaving the Simonettas, and Jared, Gina and Erika joined us there.

I brought over some brandy slush for the occasion as it is the perfect cocktail for a holiday celebration.

We enjoyed some delicious food, cocktails and the good company of great friends, as well as taking some family photos in front of the Christmas tree.

Finally, it was time for us to make our way to church. We always attend the 11:00 candlelight service at our church on Christmas Eve. In addition to singing Christmas songs, the highlight of this service is the very end. Everyone has their own candle that we light at the end and sing Silent Night. Whenever we attend candlelight service, we have to play "not it" to see who has to sit next to my dad during the service. He thinks that it is entertaining to play with his candle and pretend to light things on fire, so some lucky family member has to babysit him during the service. Two years ago, Jared and I sat on either side of him and we obviously didn't do a very good job of watching him because he managed to light Jared's program on fire during the service. This year, Gina got to sit next to him and she did a good job keeping him under control. Everyone made it out unharmed and the church is still standing.

After church, the Roche family went back to my house to wait for Santa! We all opened one of our gifts under the tree from Gina. She gave us all matching pajamas to wear on Christmas morning, which included shirts that said "A Roche Family Christmas". We were off to bed after a wonderful Christmas Eve so that we could get up bright and early to open all of our presents!