Whew, I've been so tired lately and so busy cleaning up that I haven't had time to post my post-Christmas recap.

Christmas Eve day was a blur to me, I was baking, cooking, and wrapping at the same time. I needed to get everything done before I went to Dave's parents' place for dinner. I didn't finish wrapping, and decided to come back after dinner and before going to Maui's for my family Christmas.

Dave's family celebrates Christmas so differently than we do. It's pretty much just his family eating dinner together, then opening gifts. This year, my immediate family came along, so there was a bit more to do. We watched a couple hours of TNT's 24 hour "A Christmas Story" marathon and ate some good food. Sharing Christmas was never something I thought about when I got married. I love spending the holidays with my super extended family, starting off with having a big potluck dinner on Christmas Eve, going to midnight mass together, taking family pictures by the tree, waiting for 'Santa' to hand out presents and everyone opening up presents at the same time. But since I've gotten married, I've had to compromise and do Dave's thing first, then meet up with the family for the gift giving afterwards. It's not the same! But hey, Dave's making the same sacrifice, too, not spending all of Christmas night with his family. It's not that I don't enjoy spending the holidays with his family, they're great people, it's just that a lot of the magic and tradition which made me love this holiday is gone. *sigh*

After Dave's parents', we stopped by home to wrap presents. I knew that my family would all be attending midnight mass (we had attended an earlier mass) that I'd have some time to finish up my stuff. However, when I called my sister, she had said that mass was at 10:30pm, and they would all be coming back soon. I told her to stall them from opening presents until I got there and started wrapping like a maniac.

We finally got all the presents into the car, and I was a bit grumpy after Dave told me that it wouldn't be a big deal if we missed the present opening. (to which I snapped, "But that IS Christmas to me!")

We got to Maui's, and everyone was happy that we were there, they had been waiting for us. We took our family picture, and then Santa went to work handing out the presents.

Now to be under the age of 10 in my family is gold, you know that pretty much every person who walks through the door got you presents. So all the little kids were all giddy with their piles and piles of presents. As you get older, that pile of presents diminishes, to the point where the older kids (I still call my generation kids) sit there at attention, hoping and praying that Santa will call their name. Of course, we've all ensured that everyone gets a present - all the cousins do a grab bag every year. But really, once we hit that age, the only presents we could hope for are from our grab bag person, our parents or our siblings.

Present opening time is always the best, because we wait until every present is handed out, then open the presents in a flurry of bows and wrapping paper.

I got some pretty good stuff, ranging from the "Serenity" DVD to Nike baby booties for Yano Jr. to a pasta bowl set to the full Buffy the Vampire Slayer Chosen collection. A pretty good haul this year!

Dave got some great stuff as well, scoring some new snowboarding goggles, an armstrap for his iPod Nano, and a baseball mitt and ball for Yano Jr.

Once the presents were over, it was time to go to the basement and lounge around, watching DVD's and playing games til dawn. We watched "The Family Guy" and "The Warriors" and played some poker (I lost $5). I could barely stay awake, so I ended up crashing at around 4:30am.

We all slept in the basement, some on the hideaway bed, me on the couch, some people on the floor, some people on chairs. I'm sure it's an interesting site to see, a bunch of grown people curled up on a floor sleeping!

Christmas day I was in and out of consciousness, half aware of what was going on around me. It was so nice to lounge around and sleep in for a day! We watched more movies, ate more food, and slept some more. It was perfect.

So even though I missed a lot of my favorite parts of Christmas, it was still great to be with family for the holidays.

I'd have pictures, but they're loaded on my crappy desktop at home...maybe tomorrow!

Hope everyone had a great holiday!

Posted by Yano at December 28, 2005 10:10 AM

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