Christmas Party, Part 1

We celebrated Christmas with Ron’s family this past Saturday. What a great time it turned out to be!

One thing I really like about their Christmas gathering is that every year it’s different. I know, that is a far cry from my own past. Every year, we would have the same food, the same people, sitting in the same place. As much as I love bubulki, when you are forced to leave the old traditions behind, sometimes even seeing a hint of what used to be can be painful. That’s what makes his family’s parties so awesome. There is no such thing as tradition!

Every year, someone else will host the Christmas party. Who ever hosts, decides on a theme for that year. The year we hosted, we chose comfort food as our theme. So, our Christmas dinner was all that food that gives you warm fuzzies. We had meatloaf, cabbage and noodles, spaghetti and meatballs, just to name a few. An eclectic mix, but I thought it was awesome.

This year was a western theme. The hosts, Ron’s cousin Sara Beth and her husband Raoul, provided the brisket and the smoked turkey. C’mon, with a start like this, how can the meal not be fantastic? In previous years, we’ve had Christmas around the world, where everyone chose a food from different countries (of course, I chose Czechoslovakia and made halupki!), and last year was an old fashioned Christmas theme.

Regardless of the theme, when families that love each other come together for good food and good cheer, then all is right with the world.

As with my family, the little ones of the family seem to have shot up like weeds in the few months since we’ve seen everyone. I think they all made out with great hauls from the family Santas.

One of the best stories from Saturday was with Ron and his great-niece McKenna. She is 20 months old, and just as cute as cute can be with her huge eyes and ringlet curls. She got a pop up book for Christmas that also had buttons on the side that when pushed would play a corresponding tune to go with the page you were on.

After she opened her book, she brought it to Uncle Ron to read it to her. She climbed up on his lap, put a thumb in her mouth, her head back against Ron’s shoulder and she was ready. He read to her, and showed her how to press the buttons to make the little songs play. Then, he sang softly to her along with the one song. That was it. She was hooked! As soon as the song finished, she pressed the button for one more time. That happened quite a few more times before she’d let Ron off the hook from singing. It was so cute to see the two of them snuggled up like that.

It was a great day. I ate too much, laughed a lot, and got to get hugs from everyone. The best part of all that is we get to do it all over again this Saturday when we join my family at Mike and Jenny’s for another Christmas feast!

I’ll make a prediction: The kids will have grown since I’ve seen them last, they’ll haul in some great Christmas booty, I’ll eat too much, laugh a lot and get a lot of hugs. I could get used to these kinds of Saturdays.