Merry Christmas Eve!

Oh wait… Merry 4th Day of Christmas! I typed the first line of this post on Christmas Eve and then never made it back to finish because PRIORITIES. Like finishing shopping and wrapping and watching Elf (again) and singing carols and eating as many donuts as I could handle. I am kind of a wrapping glutton, so I might have convinced most of my in-laws to let me wrap their gifts, which meant we turned the couch and I hid behind it wrapping while the others watched Christmas movies because my middle child FOMO absolutely does not want to be left out, but needs Christmas secrecy. It also meant that everyone got to be surprised Christmas morning, as they might remember what they bought…. but had no clue what it looked like wrapped.

Our Christmas break is always a little zany, because we just can’t handle making the trek from the East Coast to the middle of the country without hitting both sets of families. Thus, we did an early Christmas in Kentucky with my family, then made the drive up to Indiana for Christmas day with James’ family, then it will be back to Kentucky for me to mooch on my parents’  food and TV while James flies back to DC. Tis the season and tis the life.

But should you find yourself munching on leftovers in your fat pants (oh, is that just me?), here are some this and that to keep you company.

This year I bought a gift card before coming to Indiana and declared that the whole visit we would keep track of who won every sort of competition and the final winner got the card. Because nothing says family fun like cutthroat competition that has a target prize. James’ sister and her husband brought two awesome new games and we are now thoroughly obsessed with this real estate game and this “perfected” version of Apples to Apples that turns it into what we all really wanted it to be anyways.  Even the supposed game hater among us (cough… James… cough) loved both.

The 12 days of Christmas have JUST begun, so it is officially time to start singing those carols, but only the ones that are any good.

Because as the Williams-Sonoma catalog teaches us, “You must SING! Yes, you must join hands with your gorgeous WASP children and sing carols in perfect harmony aloud for all to hear, so that the rest of world knows the truth: that their lives are poop* and you, good friend, live among the holiday gods, in an evergreen paradise scented with luscious peppermint oils and laden with soup tureens and festooned with garlands sewn from the skinned corpse of a dead swan.” * Language edited since my granny occasionally remembers the url to this blog and stops in, but be forewarned if you go read for yourself.

Every time I come home, I basically turn into a back home baller, and I bet you do too.

As we think about having a kid (I can feel it now…. your fear that this will become a mommy blog…), I loved this article about the rise of “mama” and what it says about motherhood culture.

But maybe you should be scared, since this exists, and I may overload you with blog posts that show my child as a penguin. An organic penguin at that.

Christmas break is when I do all my best reading. I DEVOURED this book over the weekend and have spent almost all my energy the past 24 hours reflecting on how to survive a pandemic. The answer: Shakespeare and comics. James is reading this book, and I read a couple of essays out loud while he did dishes last night, laughing and crying. For any fathers-to-be, I couldn’t recommend it enough. And thank you all for your suggestions on my last post! Both of things to read, and things to ignore.

Photo at the top from this article about the peace of winter walks in the forest… hoping that some snow will come to the East Coast when we make it back in January!