Family Christmas

Christmas in Maine was delightful and seems utterly surreal after returning to the farm last night.  Getting away from the farm was typically chaotic and frantic, with last minute wrapping and loading up the turkey I cooked in the middle of the night.  Matt pulled me away from a sink full of dirty dishes (which are still there, sigh) for the seven hour trip through Vermont and New Hampshire.  The weather was with us and we arrived Christmas Eve without mishap.  Mia worked all day at Care Station and arrived in the wee hours of Christmas morning.  AJ flew in Christmas night.  I had a wonderful time with my family all around me.  Annie and Eric have a beautiful, sunny, comfy home in Gorham, near Portland, Maine.   I knitted, paged through magazines, started a book, enjoyed my handsome and talented grandchildren, ate meal after gourmet meal prepared by Annie, and drank Yule Glug, our traditional Swedish Christmas drink.  The three days and nights flew by and now seem very surreal.  AJ and Mia headed back to Morristown and we set out for the farm.  We found piggies loose in the barn with the farm sitter and her kindergarten daughter trying to lure them back into their pen with a bucket of slop.  I think I figured out how they were getting out but we'll see today.  The girls would rather be running loose but I can't have that.  The sheep steal their slop and the piggies could run in the road.  I brought them two buckets of lovely warm slop this morning thinking if their tummies are full they would be less likely to bust out.  I talked nice to them and scratched their backs while they lapped up the goo...then they grabbed the pan and tipped it over into the mud.  Bad girls!  We'll see how this goes...In the meantime I still have visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, but those visions are three hundred miles away in another state.  I sure do miss my family.  Time to dive into the farm, which has always kept me too busy to be blue.