No surprise that the child is being a grumpy pain. It's Christmas after all. He slept in, refuses to open his gifts (he is the only we bought for this year). He is stuck here at grandma's until he does, so he is only prolonging his time.

For spending one night over here he brought his whole desktop computer and has been on it all last night and today, no interaction with us at all.

I'll never do more than invite him for Holidays and if he does not come, he does not come.

Timelies all!

We're home now.

I am so full! And Christmas dinner with family friends wasn't as bad as I was afraid it might be. But seriously, I was just getting rolling with the sitting around in pajamas when it was time to get up and go this afternoon. We watched Desk Set AND White Christmas, and it was perfect.

My brother and SiL got us a Clue game, but not just any Clue game: a *Bob's Burger's* Clue game! That'll be fun to play.

I am super tired. And my family is loud as hell. But we had a good time.

My notorious sweet tooth is AWOL, which means most of the sweets we brought home (a crapton of cookies and some incredible baklava) are going in the freezer. We also got a lot of chocolate, but that doesn't need to be frozen.

It's always perplexing when my sweet tooth isn't running the show. All I really want is cheese and charcuterie. I have a party-tray tooth.

I ate too many sweets. So now I also want charcuterie. But hopefully will manage to spend my energy wisely tomorrow and make a yummy brunch. I think my only plan for the day is "read a bunch of Yuletide stories"

It was Linda in the Alley with a Full Musical Number

Imagining Bob's Burgers Clue is making me happy. Actually, I am probably more imagining the Belchers playing Clue, but surely the two are pretty similar.

We did Christmas at my BIL's house. It was really grand. There were 5 under the under 5 category and they ran around non-stop, and tried really hard to accidentally fall in the pool, but too many adults giving them warnings so it didn't happen. SIL brought craft stuff and they made footprint penguins. And various parents brought enough diversion stuff, although chasing each other for hours seemed the main activity. There were also about 5 in the teen set who hung together. There were 25 I think and a metric ton of food. It was rather funny that they sent my son home with 2 large filled styrofoam containers of food (mac 'n cheese and baked ziti), plus a whole pie and a whole pack of rolls. He may have taken turkey too. He didn't eat hardly anything there because of his tooth, but he said he really wanted the option later.

We have a very ethnically diverse family so the food included Haitian griyo and spicy pikliz, and lots of festive rice. The Italian crew brought eggplant parm and baked ziti as well as bruschetta and stuffed mushrooms. The Bahamians and Cubans contributed a super tasty concoction that involved jalapenos, tons of sweets, and adult beverages. More than half the group is vegetarian, but there was still pork (griyo), ham, and turkey as well as the meaty lasagna I made for the carnivores.

So my off diet day no doubt wiped out a whole week of being good, but worth it. We were there about 6 hours and it was super noisy and delightfully fun the entire time. All smiles, no bad moods or unpleasantness!!

Happy birthday, Jesse!

Happy Birthday to Theodosia and Jesse!

I also have a couple family friends born today, good people born this day for sure.

My (pre-figuring things out) high school girlfriend was born on December 26. She told me that she had received Christmas presents before she was born.

And my first boyfriend was born on December 24. Hmmm -- I never realized that pattern before.

Luckily, my mother (December 15) had trained me well from a young age. Anyone with a birthday around Christmas gets both a birthday present and a Christmas present, not one big combined present.