Friday night, we went to Main Street Friday Vibes holiday event where there was pizza, cookie decorating, gingerbread making and sheet cake eating. All our favorite holiday things.
There was a group photo…I tried to get a friend, Tiffany, in the red shirt to put her arm around Edda so she’s face forward and we (the adults) wouldn’t have to be in the picture, but alas, it didn’t work that well so Jeremy ducked behind her to hide himself a bit.
Because we aren’t having Christmas at home, I didn’t get to do my most favorite Christmas tradition which is that around Dec 15th, I stop opening boxes that are delivered to the house and I don’t wrap them and I just put them under the tree. And then we randomly open them on Christmas morning. My favorite memory is of Vince opening a gift and saying “windshield wipers!”. But now that we don’t have little kids, we’ve totally eased up on the gift giving. Jeremy and I don’t exchange gifts, Vince asked for a deferred gift like when his phone explodes or he drops his laptop into the bath that maybe we can help him buy a new one. And Edda is the buddha – needs nothing. I had to wrap a total of seven gifts this year – for two Secret Santa exchanges and I went through and decluttered my gift wrap drawer and used different wrapping paper for each gift and I found ribbon, bows and stickers and I USED THEM ALL. I need to no longer “save things for later” – I need to use them all with gusto!
We had a rowdy and quick Christmas brunch with the DC Martin’s on Saturday where some of these gifts were opened. My favorite exchange was that Edda was Eric’s secret santa and got him…..an electric toothbrush. Hooray for holiday oral hygiene.
And another quick Saturday night dinner with my folks where we were gifted picture frames and had 5 burrito bowls. I tried to get Jeremy to order only three, but he wanted each person to have one and it was way too much food…but at least my parents will have leftovers for a few days. We left Elka there to be dogsat, she was a little reluctant – but little does she know that on her birthday on the 28th, my parents are going to make her a really nice steak for dinner. She’ll be three. My dad is turning 83 on Christmas day. I hope he gets a nice steak too.
We flew to ABQ on Sunday meeting Bob and Katherine at the airport and settled into a hotel in town. We are trying a different tactic this year and not immediately driving 5 hours to Gila, instead we drove the next day. This allowed us to have a leisurely dinner at a tex-mex restaurant where I did get my desired 3 meals for 5 people ratio and also this wonderful strawberry margarita in a cactus glass.
This dinner was only 10 minutes walking from our hotel, so we all had alcoholic drinks (save Edda) and were able to walk home through a nicely decorated park.
We spend Monday mostly driving and shopping for food.
The light is devine, the air is dry and the cell service is spotty. But we’ll be together. We are only 5 now, but Emy and Seth are also here and will join us for dinner and then later in the week, we’ll swell to 17 people. Fun times!
