{"id":3363,"date":"2026-01-02T03:31:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T03:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/?p=3363"},"modified":"2026-01-01T22:08:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T22:08:06","slug":"christmas-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/christmas-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-10.56.40.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3368\" src=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-10.56.40-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-10.56.40-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-10.56.40-768x1023.jpg 768w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-10.56.40.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>It was madness!\u00a0 It was chaotic! It was wonderful!<\/p>\n<p>As usual we had a houseful for Christmas this year! Ourselves, plus two of our three children (with spouses), six of our eight grandchildren, one step-grandchild, three significant others, and one great-grandchild were all here for Christmas morning, along with my sister-in-law.<\/p>\n<p>Not all of them actually stayed here in our house, since we don\u2019t have that much extra room, but the ones who weren\u2019t in our spare rooms had rented a house nearby.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.29.00.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3364\" src=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.29.00-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.29.00-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.29.00-768x1023.jpg 768w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.29.00.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>We had seventeen people in our living room for present opening, five of them under the age of fifteen. We served brunch, which was provided mostly by my oldest daughter, and later dinner. <a href=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.31.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3365\" src=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.31-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.31-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.31-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.31.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>We all contributed to dinner. I cooked the turkey, stuffing, mushroom casserole, and pumpkin bread. Older daughter contributed corn casserole and broccoli casserole; younger daughter made the orange sweet potato cups, gravy, and an elaborate black forest cake for my birthday. Rolls were cmpliments of my sister-in-law, and my second oldest grandson made a delicious cranberry-orange bread. We feasted.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.51.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3366\" src=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.51-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.51-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.51-768x1023.jpg 768w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-09.39.51.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>With so many people milling around, opening gifts, eating, and drinking, it did get noisy and chaotic, but everyone was in good spirits, contributed to food prep or cleaning up, and helped out when needed.\u00a0 I\u2019m ver<a href=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-19.41.07.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3371\" src=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-19.41.07-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-19.41.07-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-19.41.07-768x1023.jpg 768w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-19.41.07.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>y blessed to have the family I do.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-11.04.59.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3370 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-11.04.59-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-11.04.59-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-11.04.59-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2025-12-25-11.04.59.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was madness!\u00a0 It was chaotic! It was wonderful! As usual we had a houseful for Christmas this year! Ourselves, plus two of our three children (with spouses), six of our eight grandchildren, one step-grandchild, three significant others, and one <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/christmas-2025\/\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,70,337],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas","category-family","category-holidays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3363"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3374,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions\/3374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}