Every year the location that we will all go to for Christmas alternates between my Grandparents’ house and my Parents’ house. This year it happened to be at my Grandparents’. On Christmas Eve, we pack all the presents under our tree at home into as few cars as we can manage, and head up to my Grandparents’ house. Now, I’ve always thought it is cool that I can say honestly, “over a river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house I go.” Sure, it may only be a small creek, and trees are probably not packed close enough for some people to classify them as woods, but it’s close enough for me.
Once we arrive, we make several trips to and from the house with armfuls of gifts. We take these presents and pile them around the tree. The tree ends up with about a three foot radius of presents around it.
After all the presents were brought in, I started making some salsa, Togo’s style. The only thing that I didn’t do right (it still tasted perfectly fine) was that I used Italian parsley instead of cilantro. It was apparently a good mistake, because my grandma, my aunt, and my mom don’t like cilantro anyway. Everyone who tried it said that it was very good, so I was pleased with my first attempt at making fresh salsa.
After some snacks were munched on, and a game of magic was played with my cousin, I ventured back into the main part of the house to find a (practically) family tradition being played on the table. Every time we get enough people together from my mom’s side of the family, we break out the Rummikube game. Vaguely similar to Rummy played with cards, only this game is played with tiles, and there are a few differences in how you are allowed to play tiles.
After a Keith arrived carrying the rest of the Playstation 2 that I left at home, we plugged it all in and started up Guitar Hero. Unfortunately, we only had one guitar controller, so we had to take turns playing. I did manage to make Kyle look somewhat like a rock star in this photo.
After a restless night from a painful rib (I had been coughing for about a week and a half, which either bruised a rib or strained a muscle), people started moving stirring about at around 7 in the morning. When everyone was inside the house (some slept in the motor home outside) we started handing out stockings. After we all sifted through our stockings, we started to open up gifts (here are some of the pictures). Kyle left after opening presents to bring Kerry up so that she could open hers. Kyle almost missed his favorite meal. We had delicious biscuits and gravy (I had jam instead, not a big fan of the gravy) for breakfast.
After we all played around with our new toys and other gizmos and gadgets, we ate dinner. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy; can’t beat a great combination like that. Afterwards, we had to try to gather up everything and stuff it all back into the car. This time we had an extra person to ride in the car since Meghann had to leave to go spend time with her family, taking her car (and Keith’s ride there) with her.
All in all, it was a great Christmas, and it was nice to see some of my cousins again. Next year should be at my parents’ house, and if this moving out thing goes according to plan, it should be quite fun.
Currently attending Folsom Lake College and working as a shift leader at a Togo's / Baskin Robbin's store. Programming and logic in general fascinate him, as Chadd tries to become a Computer Science major.