Angela Law

We have this thing with our families where each of us is required to visit the other familys’ house once per Christmas season. We’ve already been to Brian’s parent’s house (Christmas Eve) and my parent’s have been here (Christmas Day), so we knocked out the other two today.

We went to my parent’s house at lunchtime and they ordered some wings and pizza. That was a nice change of pace from the past few days. We hung out for a little bit and then played a couple of games of Boggle. I kicked everyone’s ass. Multiple times (do you sense a theme here)?

This evening, Brian’s parent’s came over. Drinks were drunk, snacks were eaten. It was a good time.

Now that all of that is done, I can do one of my favorite Christmas things–put all of the gifts away.

Today was the big day. I was planning on getting up around 8am (or whenever Jake happened to get up), but I awoke at 5:30am and could not fall back asleep. I tossed and turned for a while before I decided to get up and get to work. I went to the kitchen, cleaned it and started to work on Christmas dinner. After a little while, Jake poked his head out of the hallway and I told him that Santa didn’t come. He yelled, “Get to bed!” as he thought it was still night time. I told him that it was actually the morning and to go wake up his dad so we could open gifts.

Jake had just about as much fun opening his gifts this morning as he did last night. After that he went to work on his new toys (that kept him busy for much of the day) and I went to work on dinner. Cooking Christmas dinner was definitely less work than Thanksgiving dinner, but still a decent amount of work. My parents, grandmother, and brother joined us for dinner.

On the menu: shrimp cocktail, chicken soup with pasta cheese squares (both homemade and done ahead of time), leg of lamb, turkey breast (I had to do this on the grill because there wasn’t room in my oven for both the lamb and the turkey), mashed potato gratin, baked yams and potatoes (for the non-gratin eaters), lemon-garlic broccoli, oven roasted asparagus, dinner rolls, and salad (the last two provided by my mom).

Dinner was pretty good if I do say so myself. After we ate, we opened gifts (again). Then we sat around and talked for a bit before having dessert. A short while later, everyone left. Brian and I got the kitchen back in order and then Brian and Jake played with the pirate ships Jake got for Christmas while I arranged my jewelry in the new jewelry box I received today. When the guys were done playing pirate, they assembled the air hockey table and we all played a few rounds. I am the undisputed champion. I kicked both their asses. Numerous times. It was a lot of fun.

We spent Christmas Eve with Brian’s family. His sister and her husband and two boys were in for the occasion. Brian’s mom had to work daylight yesterday, so the cooking duties fell to Jennifer. We had the traditional lasagna for supper and it was quite delicious.

Jake has been bouncing off the walls for a week now because of Christmas. And, I think this is his best Christmas yet. Brian’s parents bought him an air hockey table. They didn’t know he wanted one, but he’s been talking about getting one for months now. You should’ve seen the look on his face when he opened that gift–it was priceless.

Here’s a lesson I learned two years ago…no matter how much Jake says he wants something, don’t bother buying it until November because he will change his mind and want something else by then. This year, he didn’t really ask for anything so I finished my shopping. As soon as I was done, he started talking about how much he wanted a Snow Monster Mega Rig Adventure. He talked about it for weeks. Not wanting to disappoint, we decided to buy it for him as an extra gift. No sooner did that arrive and he changed his mind and wanted the Lego version of Captain Jack Sparrow’s Black Pearl. But, I couldn’t really justify buying another gift at this point, so we were just going to go with what we had.

Brian told his sister about it and she went and bought the Black Pearl for Jake even though she, too, was done with her shopping (he’ll be getting his original Christmas present for his birthday, instead). Wasn’t that nice?

I could go on, but I need to get ready for Christmas dinner, which we are having here.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Brian was on the phone with his mom this afternoon. She was talking about what they got Jacob for Christmas this year. While she did not actually say what it was, she was describing the size, weight and such. His dad heard the topic of conversation and got on their other line and told Brian, “I’m not saying what it is, but you might want to pick up some monkey food while you’re out shopping today.”

It’s funny now, anyway. We’ll see if it’s still funny tomorrow.