...Part 3...
This entry was posted on 12/29/2006 4:12 PM and is filed under Holidays.
Because of the lateness of the hour when the last of the guests took off, early on Christmas morning, Josie gave us all a present. As I tucked her into bed at 12:30 a.m., she promised not to wake any of us until ten.
"I'll just watch a movie on the porch til then," she said as those sugarplum visions knocked her out. She's very thoughtful that way.
As the resident Santa, I had a lot of work to do after everyone was in bed. First of all, everyone wasn't in bed; the kids were, but Jay was still in the living room, listening to Christmas carols on his ipod deck. He kept turning up the volume, as though the house were still full of people. I kept telling him to turn it down and finally I had to unplug it and send him to bed. It took me about an hour to get all the loot under the tree. In the last few years I've noticed a fun trend; there are more presents for me than for anyone else. I don't know how that works out but I take it as a sign that I raised my kids right.
Anyway, I couldn't just climb into bed after all that, I had to relax and decompress. So I went out on the porch and indulged in a little Christmas tradition of my own; I watched the X-Files Christmas special. Nothing says "Christmas" to me like watching Mulder and Scully drag their gut shot bodies across the bloody floor to the strains of der Bingle singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". It just warms my heart.
Eight hours later we were all gathered around the tree while Josie handed out presents. When my kids were little, they were like a pack of hyenas going for the kill; they swarmed that tree and tore into presents as if they only got to keep what they could open in the first minute. A few years ago, they decided it was way more fun to prolong it by handing out one present at a time and waiting to see what it was. That's the way I'd grown up doing it and had given up ever convincing my ravenous bunch to try.
We all got a lot of good stuff that we wanted and Jay gave us a Bose surround sound to go with the giant flatscreen he gave us last year. I gave him a new Michael Buble dvd we could watch on it.
After presents, we had a huge delicious brunch and then most of us took naps (I didn't nap, I talked to JP, who had stayed in L.A. for the first time. He was going out to play golf, having never done it on Christmas day before. Then I called Margy, who was snowed in in Denver with five boys and a new pool table. Sweet!)until it was time to go visit Gramma Pat and go to Mass.
Our parish happens to have the most beautiful church in town. We haven't been able to get near the place for Christmas or Easter services in years; people from all over town come to our church on the Holidays to see how gorgeous it is and we parishoners can't get a seat. This year, a Mass at 4:30 Christmas afternoon was added and we were able to attend without getting there two hours early and we got to sit in our regular pew and it was wonderful! The music was spectacular, the church was beautiful and everyone was happy.
Then we hit the road for my folks house and my side of the family.
What could possibly be more fun (and by that I mean 'more cruel') than the gift grab of last night? How about a similar dice game, this time only involving kids under the age of ten? And the adults all take side bets on who would cry first? Jay and I won; we had our money on Gus. I even got a picture of him as the tempest sprang. Molly was pretty darn funny, too. After someone took the prize she wanted, she opened a different one, screamed "this isn't the same at all !" threw it down and stomped out of the room. Fill little kids with sugar, deprive them of sleep, then take away their presents and watch the fun!!
Good times.
Dinner was great, everyone ate too much but at least Tyler didn't try to pick a fight with anyone. He was too busy playing with the little kids who all think he's the most fun thing this side of Disneyland.
We all made plans to see Dreamgirls and got home to bed early.
