Christmas & Christmas Dinner it has to be Vegan

Wow, can all you believe it’s Christmas again? I swear it feels like to me it was just here. As you get older so many wonderful things happen in our lives over time. And as you get older; time is becoming more and more valuable! You never realize as a kid how much time you have in a day. You start to get more of an understanding as you get a little older. By high school the hours start to pick up; not exactly fly by but you start to realize if you are enjoying what you are doing then they do. In my early 20's with the kids time was time and it was all about scheduling. With adding more babies to our growing family it was always a scheduling thing for me. I had 3 kids and 3 different personalities but we also wanted the same routine. Fast forward to my mid 30's and now's it’s about how much time we don't have and how much time we need to use wisely. We all have the same amount of time but it's all about priorities now. Do we really need to do this or is it wasting time etc. So I truly feel time is flying by! It's not really, we are just more aware of the time and how we wish to spend it.

So saying all this we had a lot planned for the holidays and of course not enough time to do it all! We had our tree up the weekend after Turkey day. We had the indoor decorations up throughout the first week of December. We had brought down the lights for outside the following week and then WHAM!! I was hit by the biggest sickness I'd ever had in over 5 yrs! I was sick for an entire week that then lead into 2 weeks. Mucous, coughing, fever, cold and hot flashes. You name it. With me being our planner and doer in the family the Christmas lights for outside was not going to happen. The week before Christmas was not a good idea as they'd be down in a week. So needless to say the kids were a bit disappointed. Especially since we are the only 2nd family in the cull de sac that isn't Jewish and would have a nice display of lights. It was a very dark cull de sac at night! Oh well!

All the normal traditions were a go. Getting down and displaying the Christmas House that we bought at BJ's Wholesale club which you fill with chocolates and it comes with ornaments as you countdown to Christmas. This was different for us this year as we searched high and low for Vegan chocolate in our local wholefoods and other stores to fill for the kids. Needless to say we waited too long on that and got them gel type candies that only loaded them up on sugar and we ended up buying them thin mints. The kids enjoyed them and with all the new transitions we have enforced you have to find a happy medium. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care! So fun but yes we did. We stuffed the stockings with gummy bears and gum and some small Santa gifts. No chocolate in sight. My Mom always wants to send Christmas packages and now that we are vegan she is really trying to help out there and not send the "old stuff for snacks". Of course boxes of Cheetos and Dorito’s and Cheeze It's isn't doing it but I can't tell her off or yell at her for not realizing it has milk in all of them and we don’t' do that anymore. Reading Cooking Vegan for Dummies; is really helping as we all try to be perfect when making a change and give ourselves so much stress. We need to realize its baby steps to a whole new eating habit or new choice and we need to make that day the best BPO. Which is Best Possible Option. When we opened the box and the kids saw their old favorites they freaked out and were so excited! I was about to say "NO WAY! We do this now". But it's Christmas! So my best possible option was to allow small amounts throughout Christmas and to let my Mom know we cannot eat that anymore and please do not send it again. Now the biggest decision was Christmas dinner. With having a gorgeous British hubby; we normally would eat a ton of gorgeous veggies and the main dish would be lamb! I must admit even being vegan now; Lamb is delicious but it's not our way anymore. Neither is our other option we used to eat was Filet.

So Trevor and I talked and he went to Whole Foods and got non-chicken breast made from soy. We had this at Cafe Parizade in Durham, NC for our Thanksgiving feast and it was gorgeous. When we ate it it was not so great. Trevor cooked it beautifully but it wasn't the same. I need to talk to the man who put the Thanksgiving feast on and find out what is the difference or how did they cook them? Our veggies were roasted potatoes and onions, carrots, green beans, corn and mashed potatoes. Skylar ate it all as did Trevor and I besides the non-chicken breast. Britain was really good about trying everything! she didn't liket the non-chicken breasts as well. Luke on the other hand was a pain in our arse as you'd say in Ireland and just munched on some veggies and gave us an attitude and then cried. He cries a lot. He's a very sensitive boy; working on that.

Anyway, for our first go at a Vegan Christmas it was pretty good. Again with time; we'll make our new vegan eating routine something of ease and stress free! Any Christmas dinner suggestions or stories? Let me know! Thanks, Kerri