Christmas Day 2006

Christmas morning came early, but in the back of my mind I think I knew it would. Lori and I were both serving at church for Christmas Eve services and didn't get home until about 1 am Chirstmas morning. 'Course, I had to wind down some once we got home so I surfed on the TV for about 30 minutes before dozing off.

Our old and senile dog has had this tendency to wake us up very early on the weekends and apparently getting woke up early also applies to holidays as well. About 5:30 am he started his whining. You never knows if that just means I want you to get up, or I need to go out. You don't want to risk the going out thing so one of us usually springs out of bed, (oh ok, stumbles out of bed) and takes the dog downstairs and lets him out.

It's kind of become a tradition for us to have cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morning. Last year I went to the mall and bought a box of Cinnabon's rolls. It was my intent to do that again this year but it ended up being Pilsbury's Grands Cinnamon Rolls from Martins. Our oldest son was suppose to be at our house by 9am for breakfast. I drank about a pot of coffee from the time I got up until the cinnamon rolls were finally baked and ready to eat. Usually I have a serving (1 cup) of Kashi cereal for breakfast which has 1 gram of fat and 13 grams of protein. I had not one, but two cinnamon roles today which were 9 grams of fat each and maybe 1 gram of protein. This was just the beginning to an onslaught of extreme food indulgence throughout the day.

I love to watch our boys open their gifts. I can hardly stand it until we get to give them to them. Although we've always spent the same amount of money on each of them, when they were younger we always tried to have the same number of gifts for them to open. We always made them alterate between each other when opening a gifts, never letting them just tear into them. As they've grown up their lists have grown up too and the price tags have increased. It's not so easy to have the equal number of gifts any more. I'd rather get them what they want in a few items than what they don't want in numerous packages to open. This morning Adam had a few more boxes to open than Josh did because Josh's requests had higher price tags than Adams. There was a day when that may have mattered but today it didn't. They even made some jokes about it. They both seemed really pleased with all that they received and we had a really good time together.

Not long after we finished opening gifts at our house we packed up and headed over to my mom's house in Niles. Not exactly an 'over the river and through the woods' kinda trip, but hey this is Michiana suburbia.

My mom made a feast. We gorged ourselves on ham, sweet potatoes, baked beans and desserts that seemed to be neverending. I felt pretty good about myself before I started in on the dessert. I'm a sucker for pumpkin anything and of course when there is pumpkin cheesecake and a pumpkin cream cheese roll I had to have both. I think it was when I finished the last bite of my piece of cheesecake that the bloated feeling overtook me.

Opening gifts with at my mom's house is quite the frenzy and different from the sedate gift opening session at our house. My sister and I distributed the gifts. Once everyone has all gifts that belonged to them its a free for all. Paper is flying and bows are bouncing as gifts are torn open. My poor 80 something year old grandmother is slowly tearing the wrapping paper of hers and all along saying I can't see what anyone else is getting. By the time we're finished there is a mound of shreaded colored papper about 5 feet tall in the middle of all of us.

The pattern seems to be the same year in and year out at my moms. Once the meal is over and the gifts are opened. The party seems to just fall apart. My grandmother wants to go home and take a nap. My kids and my sisters kids have places to go and leave. My sister and her husband take off. And Lori and I usually head over to her mothers house. It almost leaves me feeling empty or greedy. We eat, we get stuff, we leave. It's the same pattern year after year.

Christmas at my mother-in-laws is yet another different experience. There is always an abundance of food left from their big meal and its strewn across my her entire counter top. Even though we just finished eating an enormous meal at my mom's house I'm popping a couple of buckeyes in my mouth and entertaing the idea of cutting into that pumpkin pie that we brought with us. The grazing seems to continue throught out the late afternoon into the evening when we decide it must be time to sit down and eat again.

Gift opening is by far the least public event of the day at my mother-in-laws house. My mother-in-law never buys gifts for the adults. Its always a card with cash that she passes to you like a secret agent passes a code to an operative. There is never an hoopla over gift exchanging and its always done in a very quiet as you arrive kind of fashion.

Three different celebration styles all in one day, but I wouldn't trade the experiences of anyone of them. I don't think I'd want them to all be the same because variety is the spice of life. I'm so grateful that I have family to spend the holidays with and count my blessings for just that. Each party, unique in its own way, providing memories in my heart that no one can ever take away.