Angela Law

We made a road trip to Maryland this afternoon and visited Brian’s grandmother. She spent Christmas with Brian’s aunt’s family this year so we didn’t get to see her until today. It was a pretty nice drive because it’s all country roads and there’s never any traffic. Plus, the weather was good so that made it especially nice. Of course, I slept practically the whole way there because 1. I always sleep in the car and 2. I was all sneezy today so I took a benadryl before we left.

Brian’s parent’s were there. And, their big dog, too. We stayed for a few hours and then headed home before dark. We spent part of this evening putting some of our gifts away, but now we’re down to the hard stuff–finding a place for everything Jake got–so we’re taking a break from that until tomorrow. Maybe there will be more room then.

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.