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.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all. It's Christmas morning and I am up bright and early. I couldn't lay there anymore with hickory smoke smell still heavy in my hair and cream cheese that needed to be out of the fridge. It almost had nothing to do not being able to find one of my ear plugs in the bed. It is like everything knows it's Christmas. Miss Kitty, our barn cat, came in the house last night which is normally not allowed and Tommy crawled up to snuggle this morning at the top of the bed instead of the foot. We had our fifth annual Christmas Eve Hulsey tradition of smoking the meat for our Christmas day feast. It is always an experience. Uncle Randy always brings a ton of shrimp for everyone, lies are told, old friends are remembered and this year there was someone else in the top of the barn instead of the barn owl that hung out last year. We laugh and cut up and just love on one another and there's no place else I'd rather be.

This happens in one of the old tobacco barns.  The smoker keeps us warm and there are Christmas carols on the radio in the other room... and every now and then Blue Christmas is heard by one of us... Elvis style.

 

 I had three chickens, a boston butt and sweet potatoes on this year.  The rest are ribs and turkeys.

I would love to say that nobody burned his hand or pissed his britches but I can't.  Merry Christmas!