Until I'm Home: 2010-12-26

My family has a million Christmas traditions, and I love every one of them. It doesn't actually feel like Christmas unless we do these things.

It starts, actually, two weeks before. My mom makes a bajillion and one kinds of cookies and chocolates. Fruit foldovers, mint brownies, almond crescents, chocolate turtles, chocolate covered pretzels, peanuts and raisins, ginger snaps, white chocolate peppermint sugar cookie snowflakes, pecan tassies, snowballs, buckeyes, etc, etc, and then she makes a plate for every family/friend we have in the area as our Christmas present. Usually the plates are delivered on the two days prior to Christmas. I'm amazed mom managed it this year, though my sisters helped out a lot.

Then, on Christmas Eve, we all go to the church candlelight service while chili cooks on the stove so it's ready when we get home. This year we didn't make chili because everyone else is sick of it, so instead we had baked beans. Which i think we have more often than chili, but whatever. I made my own pot of chili when I got back home. ;) Anyway, we eat dinner and watch the best Christmas movie ever: The Muppet Christmas Carol. By this time my sister and bro in-law have made it, and my younger sister's fiance and Johnny were both there as well.

Since my mom's cancer she and dad have stopped setting out the presents after we go to bed. It used to be that we'd put out our presents to each other, hang stockings and go upstairs.

While we try to fall asleep, unsuccessfully, my parents would set out all of the presents and fill stockings so we're surprised the next morning. However, this year we all trooped upstairs and brought all the presents down since Mom was so tired.

On Christmas morning, a ribbon blocks the opening to the stairs, something my parents started years ago to keep their four daughters from sneaking downstairs before everyone else. We are supposed to stay upstairs while my mom makes breakfast. Latkes, a family favorite. And we aren't allowed to come downstairs until it's all ready and my dad is up. When we get down to the table, it's set with lit candles and Christmas music playing in the background and we all have breakfast together in our PJs. This year mom slept while Erin and Jennie, my two older sisters, make the latkes and blueberry muffins, and the rest of us came down and just chilled while we waited. As we are all over the age of 21, it just doesn't make sense to cram all of us into the hallway upstairs.

After breakfast we clean up the table and put dishes in the dishwasher and then comes the big revealing. All of us head downstairs and see the tree for the very first time. This year, obviously, isn't the same, but it was still a good time. Plus my parents waited until Christmas morning to stuff stockings so that was a new addition.

We always sit in the same place, though every time we add a boy it gets a little more difficult to cram all nine of us in the family room, and stockings are always first. Once we've opened everything in there and put the candy into a large communal bowl for later, Anne and I pass out all of the presents since we sit closest to the tree. Once all the gifts are out, all but my mom open. Mom likes to wait and watch us as we open the gifts she spent so many months finding and purchasing, and once we're all done and the paper is cleared she opens her gifts while we all watch.

And once all of this is done we clean up, go get ready and drive up to Cleveland to hang with the extended family and have a huge meal and open more presents.

It's all just wonderful, a wonderful time, and it's beautiful to spend time with all of us together at the same time. And soon we'll add children to the mix and oh, the times we'll have!

I, unfortunately, did not take as many photos as I would have liked so I stole some from previous years, but you get the basic idea. Plus, I found an app that is very similar to the hipstamatic for iPhone and it makes me look like I can actually take good photos!

So to finish, here are a bunch of photos from Christmas Day, everything from Johnny and Derrick spending ample time with their phones to a bunch of us playing Balderdash, to my cousin's children pretending to eat a turkey whole.

I hope you had a blessed Christmas, and I'll be back to regular, shorter posts here soon. :)