The Fifth.....Christmas

So, Christmas and New Year is over for another 12 months. This year was good, it was a little different. We don't have a lot of blood family in this country, there are my parents, my mother's sister and her husband and daughter. My sister is in the States with her husband and the rest of the family is mainly in England with a few in Italy. However, with the extended family we number 13. Not really a positively portentous number for a Christmas table, but until the man of my dreams appears, 13 we shall remain.

We swap hosts each year, one year we host it, the next my Aunt or cousin host it. It's a wonderfully chaotic day of meeting at the hosts' house for a HUGE good ol' fashioned English breakfast, complete with eggs, bacon, sausages, potato pancakes, lamb chops, baked beans, stuffed tomatoes...you get the idea....we eat, we wait for the 'grown up's' to drink their tea and chin wag, we clean up, we FORCE the 'grown up's' to get off their duff's and move to the living room where we finally get to open our presents. A glorious 2 hours of "this one's not mine, it's Susan's" and "what did you get?" and "who needs a present to open?" follows.

Then we all go home, get dressed for dinner and meet up again, usually at the Old Mill, for Christmas dinner.

This year, with my dad's health not being great, my work schedule, and my sister not arriving until late on Christmas Eve, we changed things, the breakfast is too much work now, so we met for Christmas brunch at The Doctor's House, then came back to our house to open prezzies, snacked on cold cuts, quiche, veggies, chips and dip etc. for the remainder of the day.

It ran smoothly. It was nice. Chaotic, of course, but nice.

My dogs LOVED having my cousin's two kids, and her husband's two kids, to rough house with for the day, funny, they were not raised with kids, and yet they both adore them.

New Year's Eve Eve was spent at the emergency room with my father, he was having 'flutters' in his chest, since he has heart problems we went right to the hospital. Spent the night in a waiting room full of puking, barfing, germ ridden people and their offspring.

I have a thing about vomit.

I can not ABIDE vomit.

The very idea of it fills me with dread and panic.

This was not a good place for me to be.

Dad was ok, we got home around 4am....by that point I had been up for 22 hours. Worked 12 of them. I was tired. I was supposed to go to my sisters for New Year's, but by the time I got up I had a raging head ache and was still worried about my dad, so postponed the NYE celebrations until New Years day.

Spent the next 4 days with my sister and brother-in-law watching movies, eating great food, playing Prince of Persia on PS3. It was a good time.

Is that good enough for another blog post?

Too boring? Too wordy without enough being said? Nothing of interest for anyone?

Well, no one reads this anyway, so I guess it's good enough for me :-)

And, hey, at least I did one, right?

'till next time, in harmony

Irish Red