Kipworld

Happy holidays, again… hope it all went well for you.

I finished wrapping presents here at the condo late Fri night and drove up the next morning. Went pretty much straight to church with the folks. The Christmas service has definitely changed over the years. This year was a multimedia presentation through some major events in Christianity, including the WWI story of the English and German truce in the trenches. At least we didn’t have to see scenes from the Passion, like last year. After church, we went to lunch with my Uncle Peter and Auntie Suzanne. This began the long weekend of eating… so much eating.

My brother and Jen came up after that and we got the house ready for the party. We took family pictures, but I don’t think we’re getting enlargements this year since Dad was wearing this crazy turquoise sweater. Then the guests arrived in a flood. There were tons of people here this year, it seemed, but really only one or two extra folks.

And we had stuffing!!! Woo hoo! I was feeling deprived of the stuff since we didn’t have any at Thanksgiving. Jen brought stuffing and mashed potatoes and they were awesome. I don’t know why I love stuffing so much. Maybe because it’s like spreadable bread, with savory flavor… I brought the leftovers home and I’m rationing it out, spoonful by spoonful.

We had our standard musical Xmas and since I was feeling the wine a bit, I borrowed Austin’s 1/2 size violin and Chien and I ripped through a little Ashokan Farewell. My brother’s best friend was over and we rocked out a bit in Guitar Hero. I looked through the last batch photos I’ve taken and an incredibly high percentage of them are people playing Guitar Hero. There’s just something awesome about watching people pick up the game and watch them shake off the wariness of the silliness and connect to the rocking out.

Christmas Day, we packed up all the gifts and went over to my sister’s house to open presents. This was to avoid a repeat of last year, when we just took the gifts for her family and opened the rest at midnight. She was very insistent on this. Bro and I were cool with going along with it, but we reserved the right to make snide comments and grumble about the inefficiencies involved. Plus, it was really early in the morning. If I had been my sister’s kids, I don’t think I would have been able to wait that long for Santa to show the heck up.

Presents! Yay! I remember when I was a kid: Kuwie and I would call each other Xmas morning to compare what we’d gotten (still remember the year they got the SNES… man, I was so jealous…). We don’t do that anymore. Actually we went through this period in late high school / early college when we wouldn’t get anything for each other, just to make life easier. Then once we started having a bit more cash, we resumed.

Christmas Day meal was at Devin’s parents’ house. They have a tradition of opening Christmas crackers, singing the 12 days of Christmas and serving really great food. I have blackmail worthy movie clips on my phone of the family doing the song. I was so tired from staying up late the night before, though, so I was pretty out if it after the meal hit my stomach.

Then it was home to… Sudoku. My parents are obsessed and they got my uncle and aunt hooked as well. So instead of the rousing card games we usually have at holiday time, everyone was sitting around their grid of paper getting grumpy.

More holiday recap later…