It’s so much fun spending Christmas with family; even better when you merge families. That’s exactly what we did. My entire immediate family travelled over streams, rivers and forests to be with my Sister and her family.
The kids are thrilled. Anna said, ‘this is the first Christmas we’re spending with Pippa’. She even wanted both families to go to Church together so she wouldn’t be away from her cousin, whom she also calls sister or sister-cousin, for even a second.
My sister, Aunty Patty, gave me one important assignment – the Christmas turkey. I’ve done this before so after a quick refresher on YouTube, I was good to go. One new trick I picked up – brining. Simply put, just soak the turkey in salt water for a while; this amongst other benefits helps you achieve an even distribution of the salt. With timers set on my phone, I was able to get some sleep between checks on the turkey and after about three hours, my turkey was ready.

Next up: Santa! The kids believe there’s Santa but some say that Santa’s Daddy and Mrs. Claus is Mummy. Aunty Patty and I planned to put all the gifts under the tree at midnight. We had spent part of Christmas Eve wrapping gifts and this was the result – a cute tree with so many gifts underneath.

Funny enough, I almost blew our cover when I began to sneeze while laying out the gifts. It must have been because of the pepper in the turkey. I wondered if Santa had ever been caught in the act because he began to sneeze or was just clumsy. Good thing everyone else was deep in sleep following the singing of carols and some Bible reading. All these gifts were opened in the morning before we all got ready for Church. Everyone had at least one gift. That was fantastic! 
The best part about Church today was meeting friends we hadn’t seen in a while and the message – everything about Christmas was a miracle… and with God, even the impossible is possible, so never lose hope. The choir also looked and sounded beautiful.

Back home… with a full house of family and a few friends, we settled to enjoy everything that had been prepared – Jollof rice, fried rice, salad, turkey, chicken, drinks, and so on. We finished off with a movie that was just right for the evening – Cinderella. Turns out the black guy in the movie is of Nigerian descent.
So this is how Christmas went for my family. I hope you had a very merry Christmas too.