Christmas Eve
Our Christmas Eve and the weekend was spent with my sister’s kids at my parents house. Tanya and I spent as much time with them as we could. We played Euchre, Rook, and Hearts for card games. This was the first time that my parents and Tanya and I had played Hearts and it is a lot of fun. We all derive some sort of a sadistic satisfaction by passing our worst cards over to our loved ones. These moments are great to foster love and nurturing feelings over a holiday together by screwing each other with the most heinous and vile cards you can muster from you hand! Muahahahah! =)
We gave the kids all of our gifts for them and their parental units to have for their present opening time as they left late on Christmas Eve. We sure do miss the munchkins when they are gone. =(
I had to shovel our driveway a little bit and that was a 2 hour ordeal that was tiring. I will have to buy a snow-blower some year. Ugghhh! Shoveling is one of the joys of home ownership that I could reeeaaaaalllly do without.
I also assisted Tanya in cooking deserts for Christmas Day at my parents house. We spent about 2 hours at the really bus Walmart shopping and fighting our way through the lines and about 4 hours cooking. Our cooking experience is as we could imagine persons cursed to never cook something right again. Everything went wrong. We started over at least twice and had to readjust the Belarussian recipe (which was given in grams and not cups) several times. Things just did not work out and we were tired and frustrated by the time we finished 4 hours later. Tanya was really cranky and frustrated. My poor little bundle of stress.
Christmas Day
I woke up early to go pick up Grandma and to take her to my parents house. During the drive there I called a bunch of people to say ‘Merry Christmas!‘ and ended up, as I do every year, inviting some of our friends over to partake in our family’s Christmas gathering. I had 4 potential takers and decided to stop at that.
After dropping my Grandmother off I then went home to take a shower and to prepare to go over there. We finished getting ready, got our stuff together and went over. Shortly after getting there at about 11:45 (11:45am) I realized that we forgot our camera and so I went home to get it while Tanya helped Mom with preparation.
Shortly after noon everyone had arrived and we were eating my mother’s excellent meal and our accursed deserts. They did not quite taste as they were intended so everyone tried and a few had a small helping for seconds.
Following stuffing ourselves we played a whole lot of Ping Pong and Euchre. It was a great time filled with great friends and family, just the way it should be.
Were we missing people that needed and wanted to be here with us? =( Yes, we definitely were. It is times like these that make us feel that loss ever more so than our everyday lives. Those people that are so very special to us and who we miss even when they are only in the next room. Maybe some day that hole can be be rather permanently filled or repaired as we conquer life’s most unfortunate situations and our own short comings and life’s curve-balls.
