Christmas Spirits

So, I never asked: how was your Christmas? Mine was lovely, thanks. We still spent far too much time in transit, but it was infinitely better than last year, when we attempted to celebrate in two different states at three different homes (none of them ours) in 24 hours. I believe that was also the year when Chris "closed his eyes for a second" and almost drove off the road. So, yeah, this was better.

The night before Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve Eve?), we had dinner at Mom's with my extended family. Lasagna, four different kinds of pizza, salad, wine, mimosas (yes, we know the mimosas don't really "go" with lasagna; we just don't care) & enough chocolate, cookies & pastries to feed a small country for a week. The wine may have contributed to a rousing discussion about Catholic guilt, movies the Pope would enjoy & how none of us could have, um, shall we say, marital relations, if we lived in a converted church.

My cousin Billy. Cute, amusing, Ivy League graduate . . .
wearing a Green Lantern t-shirt that was one of the more normal things on his Christmas list.
We will never be able to get this boy a date. He maintains that with a family like ours,
he would have to be crazy to bring a girl home. I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about.
Hi, Bean!

We spent Christmas Eve with Chris' family. More wine, more pasta, a similarly ridiculous amount of cookies & chocolate, PLUS the traditional Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. Oh, and let's not forget the bourbon slush. Between Chris' two siblings, there are seven children in the family, five under the age of eight, so chaos can erupt at any given time. Fortunately, we can always depend on the A Christmas Story marathon to lull them into an after-dinner stupor.

And, finally, Christmas Day at my step-sister's. There was food, lots of food, but what I'm remembering is wine. And egg nog. And Crown Royal. And, of course, mimosas. And then, by the end of the night, there were many shots of Jager offered in celebration of "the baby Jesus' birthday". The kids (only six of them on this side!) had a good time, or at least they didn't seem to mind too much when we appropriated their coloring books & Connect Four for our own use.

But by the end of the night, even the dog was digusted with us.

Go away.
I think next year, we're all going straight to rehab for the holidays.

Cheers!