And never brought to mind... - Festivities Part 2

Christmas morning, wake up early....

Potato Pancakes. It's what's for breakfast. :)

Definitely not your normal Christmas Morning breakfast, but who said my family was normal? Besides, they are quite delectable.

One of the best gifts I received was the Queen's Greatest hits collection...

Can you guess what we listened to while unwrapping presents? ;)

Oli and El playing with the new Wii Resort game. I think they were fencing, and it was pretty funny to watch them "Thrust, perry, LUNGE!" at each other. It was very dramatic.

Owen, of course, received a few Lego sets (both the night before - from Grama and Grampa - and day of, from us...) and all were completed within minutes of opening

New Years Eve - Morning.

My mom and I met a friend of ours and her daughter at the gym at 7:30ish...I pretty much only agreed to go with the promise of coffee afterwards. I thought they meant a run to DD but was most pleasantly surprised when I found out that Starbucks was the ultimate destination.

I tell ya: If someone took me out to Starbucks every time I went to the gym I would be going much more often than I do now....which...isn't often at all...

...moving on...

This one really should be last, but got loaded in the wrong order. New years eve I had a gathering of friends at my home and one of them brought the infamous game of Quelf, which just happens to be really random and one of Owen's favorites. That, coupled with the fact that he adores the guys who were there that night, made him a very happy camper. Unfortunately we never got around to playing this wacky party game which made the little boy rather upset. He ended up asking my friend Hedge, owner of said game, if he could borrow it....so the next morning/early afternoon my family sat around our family room footrest in our PJs and played Quelf - for most of them it was their first time.
It will not be their last.

P.S. - Hedge, we'll get Quelf back to you...someday...I promise.

New Years Eve. Before the friends arrived at our homestead, I noticed that my father had taken some of the sparkling wine out of the cupboard over the fridge - wine that had been there when we moved into our house 8ish years ago - and put it in our refrigerator. What I did not notice was that later on some sparkling apple cider was also placed alongside the wine in our fridge - both had very similar packaging.

Now my family always has bottles of wine on the counter - not a lot, just a couple - and our basement is becoming a wine cellar. For whatever reason this 'amount of alcohol' was noticed and joked about throughout the evening. Only 2 of the guests were even over 21 so they could've had wine if they had wanted.

So, midnight came and went, we all watched the ball, and numerous couples kissing while wearing blue foam hats that were endorsing Nivea, "Kiss and Be Kissed!" is what they said.

("They're just following directions..." - Hedge

This quote actually made me laugh because it reminded me of something I read recently in the book I mentioned previously, Mud and Poetry, it says:

"Genesis can be read literally. But I think it's a story, not a dissertation; and as such, we should read it as a story, a true story. I think that if science says humans are 98% the same as all other mammals, we shouldn't argue back with scant scientific evidence. why not give them, as the Bible does, poetry? Tell them you know that, genetically, humans are mostly the same as any other mammal, but that your belief that we are not the same is not based on scientific or historic proofs, but because the Bible tells us God shaped a man from warm clay with his own two hands; because he bent down and kissed him.

God breathed his life into us.

I am not a human being because I have a vascular system; I am a human being because I have been kissed, and (Lord help me) I will give kisses!")

We all meandered into the kitchen, and my dad grabbed a bottle of sparkling something out of the fridge and handed it to me to open. I was confused...
"If we were going to serve alcohal to minors...shouldn't we have done it earlier on in the night? Not when they're about to drive home?"

Now it was my dad's turn to be confused. "That's cider."

"OH..."

So we popped the cork and filled the glasses. He did bring out the ancient wine, for himself, and poured it into a glass. There was a collective "Ew." as a brown liquid flowed from the bottle.

"Yeah," my dad said. "That should be clear."

He took a sip, offered it to Hedge - who reasonably declined - and then dumped it...

Gross...

And thusly, with hugs, and 'happy new years!', and goodbyes, our new years activities ended....