Mom with Christmas Traditions' Jack Frost |
The place was charming. They had holly and stockings and other Christmas decor over the brick walls. The window next to us was oddly bright because of all the fresh snow outside (still falling as we sat there). From my seat I could easily see the street and the horse drawn carriages and the Charles Dickens costumers and so on. It was ridiculously Christmasy. I loved it.
Carolers |
Julie talks about Zoey resolving to be good the last day before Christmas. |
Not too long after that I went back to the Jacksons so I could spend at least some time with the girls that day. I very briefly did a bit of work (construction payroll).
I went back to Mom's around 7 p.m. Ellen was making a potato soup and gooey butter cookies and Julie was cooking wassail (a word she loves to say repeatedly). I finally got around to wrapping my secret santa gift, but we held off on our gift exchange because Denny was coming over with Zoey and Malcolm to say hi (we hadn't seen him yet since being in town). Sure enough, when they got there the kids went into the living room to examine JaMa's many wrapped gifts, and they were excited about the huge present in front for JaMa herself. Bwaha.
We all went downstairs to play some Quiplash and eat too many gooey butter cookies. Julie has pretty consistently answered all Quiplash questions with Game of Thrones references, which has led to her pretty consistently getting dead last in every Quiplash game. She seems to think it's hilarious though, and we tend to think her own amusement is pretty funny. We couldn't figure out how to turn on "family friendly" Quiplash, so if a slightly pervy question came up it became a game of finding the answer to best turn the question on its head. For example:
These answers were especially funny because they are the same exact humor, yet the people answering (me and I forget who now) couldn't have known in advance what similar answers they were putting. We laughed pretty hard.
Soon it was time for Denny to take the kids home to get to bed. As they were getting ready to leave I asked Zoey, "Can you believe tomorrow is Christmas???" And she was so excited she started hopping in the kitchen. She is the perfect, peak age for this, I think. Julie and Mom explained to Zoey that Santa won't come if she stays awake so she has to go to sleep easy.
After they left, the rest of us did Sibling Secret Santa. The best part of the whole tradition is standing in a circle, trying not to look at the person you're about to shove your gift toward, counting to three, and then shoving the gift as quickly as possible.
Julie had me, and she gave me this lovely poem (helpfully colored by Zoey):
A couple weeks prior Mom had transferred me a decent sum of money she said was anonymously donated by a family member. Turns out that was Julie, out of nowhere. We are very paycheck-to-paycheck right now while Jack finishes his degree, so it meant a lot. Julie told me that evening that she wrote the poem while at work, haha.
I had Everett and gave him the only gift he asked for, which was a large desk calendar that he could actually hang on his wall. He liked it. But even better, Everett had Julie, and he had wrapped a giant box filled with tissue paper only for her to find it had nothing in it at all. She then realized that the bow on the box had a tiny note taped to the back that just said "I donated to the thing" (meaning Amanda Hitchen's CERBC work). It was such a hilarious presentation for a gift Julie really did want. I was impressed.
Everett laughing at his own handiwork. |
Not long after gift exchange Julie headed home, but I stayed to play what turned out to be the only game of Betrayal I played the entire trip. It was Neil, Everett, and me, and I ended up being the traitor. I transferred the house to some other dimension filled with poisonous gas, and Neil and Everett had to roll for damage at every turn. Ultimately Neil was so weakened that when he had to try to roll to exit the junk room, it killed him. Everett started joking that he is on the first floor basically punching himself in the face (rolling for damage) trying to get to the organ room to play some magical song that would take them back to the other dimension, and he calls up to the second floor (where Neil's character had been) saying, "Neil can you come help me?" and then he just hears "AHHHH!" *sounds of junk falling all over Neil* *silence*. Both boys were acting out the potential scene (while in the background Ellen kept singing the organ music from Ghost and Mr. Chicken) and we were all laughing so hard. My stomach actually hurt from laughter. It was great.
Overall it was a wonderful, Christmasy, happy day.
This was both delightful and hilarious to read! (Too bad I have bronchitis and it makes me cough, which hurts because I now have torn costal cartilage from all the coughing. But still--totally worth it!) Thank you for so wonderfully capturing not just the day and the traditions, but also how WONDERFUL and humorous you kids are!
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