Pies For Pete's Sake!

I hope all of you are having a wonderful Christmas season. I have been spending some time recently, reflecting on Christmases past. As a kid, I lived in Liberia, West Africa - the tropics. Warm weather, palm trees, beautiful beach, and good friends. Here are some of my favorite memories:

• It was a tradition to go to the beach on Christmas day...just cuz we could. We usually spent the morning with our families, opening gifts and having our own family traditions, but by noon or shortly after we all hit the beach!!!
  
• We had, what we called then, Christmas birds...tall, while birds that seemed to appear all over right around Christmas time...I later learned that they were egrets migrating to somewhere!?
• Christmas caroling!! All us kids would go to every house and sing carols. My favorite though, was going to Aunt Clara's house (not my real aunt) and singing the song she wrote - Green, Green Christmas. That is still my favorite Christmas song and I sing it, at least to myself, several times a year....January through December!!!
• Christmas Cantatas - We were a pretty small community, but every year several wonderful women would work very hard to put on a beautiful Christmas program. As a teenager I enjoyed participating in those even though singing is not really my gift. I'm thankful to those women for letting me think I was good!!!
• Good food - my mother was the best cook I know. Simple but GOOD!! And living in Africa, everything we had was usually from scratch. The traditions I carry on from those days are fresh cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning and PIES!!! Thanks, Mom!!

Merry Christmas!!!