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Belated Holiday Report
Jan. 14th, 2012 03:45 pmI had a consistently lovely, low-key holiday season this year, lots of family outings sandwiched between two blowout Richard-orchestrated parties. I have the week between Christmas and New Year's off. Sometimes this just annoys me, as I don't have a lot of energy in December anyway and I have trouble filling the time with anything more ambitious than playing video games. But this year it was a very full week-and-a-half.
PARTIES: I tend to be grouchy and anti-social during the early winter months, and always approach holiday parties with dread, especially when they are at my house. This is not because I have to work hard to prepare for them - I let Richard do 90% of the work. I help with the invitations and do some last-minute cleanup on party day before Richard gets up, but all the decorating, heavy cleaning, cooking and most of the shopping is Richard. Then I try to be sociable for at least the first half of the party. Sometimes this is a chore, but other times I have a surprisingly good time (the magic of low expectations, I suppose). The annual caroling party was one of the delightful surprises - I had a wonderful time, and I think most of our guests did as well. I tried to get people to sign in, and it looks like we had 35-40 guests - pretty much a full house for a party that takes place entirely in 3 rooms. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
markiv1111 for doing yeoman's work providing guitar accompaniment to about 4 hours of singing.
ANOTHER PARTY: On Christmas Eve we broke with our usual tradition and drove to Benson for a Tatge family gathering. Going to Benson on Christmas Eve instead of the January gathering shoots a big hole in the day (5 hours round trip), but it seemed like a good idea this year. For one thing, Amber would be able to attend. And this was Grandma's first shot at entertaining in the new seniors apartment that she and Grandpa moved to a few months ago. The apartment is tiny, but they were able to get the use of two large party rooms. Enough family lives nearby so that much of the hot food could be brought by others, and it went really well. There was even a piano in one of the party rooms, and Richard managed to instigate some carol-singing. We got home about 11pm, but still kept up the tradition of reading the Night Before Christmas and opening one present. A tiring day, but worthwhile.
Christmas Day was the usual family celebration - starting bright and early at about noon. Richard stays up all night Santa Clausing around, so that's the earliest we can get him out of bed. I made pancakes for breakfast, which Amber informs me is our tradition. I honestly never remember this from year to year, but my mother used to make pancakes or waffles for Christmas breakfast so that's probably what I do. Then we have the present-opening frenzy, which usually devolves into Richard and Amber excitedly trying to keep me and Thorin from drifting off-task as we spend more and more time looking at the presents we have already opened instead of showing interest in new ones. I just think there are Way Too Many Presents for a family of 4, and I get overwhelmed about halfway through the proceedings. But I must admit that there were a lot of good present choices this year. A lot of the stuff that gets wrapped and unwrapped is for the household rather than individuals. This is no accident. Since Richard loves presents so much I just buy things I was thinking of buying for the household anyway and wrap them up for him. I've been known to wrap food. This year I bought some silicone bakeware, hoping to replace the nasty old dented aluminum baking dishes that keep turning up in our sink covered with baked on crud. I also bought a new 5-disk CD player to replace the broken one. This was mostly for Richard and Thorin, who like to play CDs for background music at game parties (like most of the rest of the world I now listen to most of my music digitally). The kids got together and bought Richard a Roomba-like thing that runs around the wood floors armed with a Swiffer, chortling to itself and picking up an amazing amount of dirt. As it turns out, I'm the one who likes using that one - it's vrooming around the dining room right now. And the kids got me a great present - a set of full-spectrum lights for combatting SAD! The unit is set up in the living room on top of the china cupboard so I can use it while I read the paper in the morning. I've been using it daily. It's difficult to tell if it's helping or not, but I think it probably is. I seem to be back to my summer sleep schedule demands of 7-8 hours rather than the 9 hours I seem to crave in the winter. I got a couple of books and some nice jewelry, including a huge glitzy golden necklace that I would never have bought for myself but which looked great at all the subsequent holiday parties. I got no fewer than 4 scarves, but they are all different and all appropriate to my tastes.
ONE MORE PARTY and a HALF: By pre-arrangement we dropped in at chezminnehaha in mid-afternoon so we could visit with their kids and grandkids. Then Richard and I went back in the evening for the big party. Both gatherings were lovely, but I think I enjoyed the afternoon one the most. We all sat around the big round table playing with Play-Doh.
FINAL PARTY: We capped off the holdiay season by hosting the Minnstf New Year's party. I think it went quite well (again, thanks to Richard), but I was pretty much partied out by then. So this particular party was the only one of the season that exactly met my expectations, which is to say that I was quite relieved when it was over.
OTHER STUFF:
Amber was home for 10 days (just missing both parties, unfortunately). She's on a big health kick and was determined to avoid the holiday weight gain so we became exercise buddies, working out together at the Y almost every day. This was great on several levels - gave us a lot of time together, got me going on a robust exercise schedule again, and used up all my 2011 guest passes. I still gained weight, as I was not watching my diet carefully, but she didn't. And I did improve my fitness level by about one notch. We also had one of our rare mother-daughter shopping trips at Penney's.
Gosh, I didn't realize just how much we all did. We saw Hugo at the new Icon theater - all really enjoyed it. Barb came over the day after Christmas to celebrate one night of Hannukah, something we used to do when the kids were younger. We add up to 1 and a half Jews among the 5 of us so our Hannukah skills are minimal, but it's part of our family tradition. We added something new this year - we got bored waiting for the menorah to burn down and went up to the attic to watch "The Hebrew Hammer" on streaming Netflix. A very silly movie, but it seemed hiliarious at the time. Another night we drove through a big lights-in-the-park display in St. Paul, and then had a delicious dinner at Moscow on the Hill. That's all I can think of now, but I probably forgot something. It was a good holiday season.
PARTIES: I tend to be grouchy and anti-social during the early winter months, and always approach holiday parties with dread, especially when they are at my house. This is not because I have to work hard to prepare for them - I let Richard do 90% of the work. I help with the invitations and do some last-minute cleanup on party day before Richard gets up, but all the decorating, heavy cleaning, cooking and most of the shopping is Richard. Then I try to be sociable for at least the first half of the party. Sometimes this is a chore, but other times I have a surprisingly good time (the magic of low expectations, I suppose). The annual caroling party was one of the delightful surprises - I had a wonderful time, and I think most of our guests did as well. I tried to get people to sign in, and it looks like we had 35-40 guests - pretty much a full house for a party that takes place entirely in 3 rooms. Thanks to
markiv1111 for doing yeoman's work providing guitar accompaniment to about 4 hours of singing. ANOTHER PARTY: On Christmas Eve we broke with our usual tradition and drove to Benson for a Tatge family gathering. Going to Benson on Christmas Eve instead of the January gathering shoots a big hole in the day (5 hours round trip), but it seemed like a good idea this year. For one thing, Amber would be able to attend. And this was Grandma's first shot at entertaining in the new seniors apartment that she and Grandpa moved to a few months ago. The apartment is tiny, but they were able to get the use of two large party rooms. Enough family lives nearby so that much of the hot food could be brought by others, and it went really well. There was even a piano in one of the party rooms, and Richard managed to instigate some carol-singing. We got home about 11pm, but still kept up the tradition of reading the Night Before Christmas and opening one present. A tiring day, but worthwhile.
Christmas Day was the usual family celebration - starting bright and early at about noon. Richard stays up all night Santa Clausing around, so that's the earliest we can get him out of bed. I made pancakes for breakfast, which Amber informs me is our tradition. I honestly never remember this from year to year, but my mother used to make pancakes or waffles for Christmas breakfast so that's probably what I do. Then we have the present-opening frenzy, which usually devolves into Richard and Amber excitedly trying to keep me and Thorin from drifting off-task as we spend more and more time looking at the presents we have already opened instead of showing interest in new ones. I just think there are Way Too Many Presents for a family of 4, and I get overwhelmed about halfway through the proceedings. But I must admit that there were a lot of good present choices this year. A lot of the stuff that gets wrapped and unwrapped is for the household rather than individuals. This is no accident. Since Richard loves presents so much I just buy things I was thinking of buying for the household anyway and wrap them up for him. I've been known to wrap food. This year I bought some silicone bakeware, hoping to replace the nasty old dented aluminum baking dishes that keep turning up in our sink covered with baked on crud. I also bought a new 5-disk CD player to replace the broken one. This was mostly for Richard and Thorin, who like to play CDs for background music at game parties (like most of the rest of the world I now listen to most of my music digitally). The kids got together and bought Richard a Roomba-like thing that runs around the wood floors armed with a Swiffer, chortling to itself and picking up an amazing amount of dirt. As it turns out, I'm the one who likes using that one - it's vrooming around the dining room right now. And the kids got me a great present - a set of full-spectrum lights for combatting SAD! The unit is set up in the living room on top of the china cupboard so I can use it while I read the paper in the morning. I've been using it daily. It's difficult to tell if it's helping or not, but I think it probably is. I seem to be back to my summer sleep schedule demands of 7-8 hours rather than the 9 hours I seem to crave in the winter. I got a couple of books and some nice jewelry, including a huge glitzy golden necklace that I would never have bought for myself but which looked great at all the subsequent holiday parties. I got no fewer than 4 scarves, but they are all different and all appropriate to my tastes.
ONE MORE PARTY and a HALF: By pre-arrangement we dropped in at chez
minnehaha in mid-afternoon so we could visit with their kids and grandkids. Then Richard and I went back in the evening for the big party. Both gatherings were lovely, but I think I enjoyed the afternoon one the most. We all sat around the big round table playing with Play-Doh. FINAL PARTY: We capped off the holdiay season by hosting the Minnstf New Year's party. I think it went quite well (again, thanks to Richard), but I was pretty much partied out by then. So this particular party was the only one of the season that exactly met my expectations, which is to say that I was quite relieved when it was over.
OTHER STUFF:
Amber was home for 10 days (just missing both parties, unfortunately). She's on a big health kick and was determined to avoid the holiday weight gain so we became exercise buddies, working out together at the Y almost every day. This was great on several levels - gave us a lot of time together, got me going on a robust exercise schedule again, and used up all my 2011 guest passes. I still gained weight, as I was not watching my diet carefully, but she didn't. And I did improve my fitness level by about one notch. We also had one of our rare mother-daughter shopping trips at Penney's.
Gosh, I didn't realize just how much we all did. We saw Hugo at the new Icon theater - all really enjoyed it. Barb came over the day after Christmas to celebrate one night of Hannukah, something we used to do when the kids were younger. We add up to 1 and a half Jews among the 5 of us so our Hannukah skills are minimal, but it's part of our family tradition. We added something new this year - we got bored waiting for the menorah to burn down and went up to the attic to watch "The Hebrew Hammer" on streaming Netflix. A very silly movie, but it seemed hiliarious at the time. Another night we drove through a big lights-in-the-park display in St. Paul, and then had a delicious dinner at Moscow on the Hill. That's all I can think of now, but I probably forgot something. It was a good holiday season.
