Scenes from Christmas Eve

We have a tradition with Shaun's side of the family of cooking the meat for Christmas day on Christmas Eve.  Shaun fires up the big smoker in the barn next door, I always include a couple of chickens for future use and most of the time have sweet potatoes to cook, and a few friends also bring their holiday meats to cook.  Since smoking meat takes several hours we get in some really good fellowship with each other and friends stopping by.  There's always lots of laughs.  Uncle Randy brings shrimp for all of us and this year Jeff brought chicken wings with homemade sauce for us to enjoy.  So we eat good during the whole cooking process.  It has turned out to be a tradition that I really look forward to.  I think this was our sixth year.  It was pretty cold out and the wind was cutting in from the north so Shaun and Gary hung tarps on both entrances to the old tobacco barn which cut the cold considerably in the old airish barn.  I really enjoy it and am thankful I have good family.