Christmas 09, part one

Christmas was good, as always. We started out the festivities with 2:15 mass at St. Cletus and then came back home to get a few other things done before we headed out to Jenny and Jay's. They had a delicious dinner of Portillo's beef and pasta. It was a low key night. The weather was icy and windy, it was past Marmar's bedtime and Pawp was in San Francisco, Dane was in Iowa and Tom was in Houston so they were not there (Note: That is a little coping mechanism called denial; that is what we say to ourselves, so we will not think about their absences and how much we miss them. It works for me). We had a good time being together, but it seemed like everything we said turned into a Debbie Downer kind of thing, no matter how hard

we tried. After a while it was funny! Here are our Debbie Downer pictures:

When we got back to our house, Wayne and Sally exchanged gifts and gave us our gifts and then we went to bed.
On Christmas morning, the kids opened presents and then we took off for Jack's parents' house. We exchanged presents with them and then had our late breakfast. We always enjoy that time together with Bucky and Grandma, Downtown Sue and Uncle Paul.Bucky got a shirt from Grandma that was exactly like the one Jack had on. Good taste runs in the family!


Above is a picture of Paul and Grandma with one of the presents that Jack gave Paul. It is an Air Force One Airport Playset that Jack got at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. Yep. Below is a picture of Bucky, Sally and Wayne, having some sort of intellectual discussion.

This is Downtown Sue in her traditional present-opening spot.

After breakfast, Wayne and Grandma went looking for all of the Kraft products in the house. Grandma has a stockpile of Strawberry Newtons. Wayne was pleased with that support of Kraft products :).

We came back to Grandma and Bucky's that evening. In the evening, everyone is there, including Mike (Jack's brother), Sue (his wife) and their kids Lauren and Brendan. This year, Mike was back in the hospital due to a postsurgical infection and so he wasn't there. We did get to talk to him on the phone and he came home the next day, but still it wasn't the same without him. I am sorry to report that I do not have many pictures from the evening visit to Jack's folks' house because 1) my camera broke during dinnner!!! bummer! It kept saying "lens error. restart camera" but alas, I think my camera is gone for good. I was able to use Sally's for a couple of cousin shots. 2) that is when we do family pictures, but we just didn't want to do any without Mike.

Lauren, Sally, Brendan and Wayne in a creative Brady Bunch pose

Grandma and Bucky and their grandchildren
Here are two cute video clips from the morning. The first is a brief clip from the annual singing of "Shortening Bread" by the men. Mike phoned in from his hospital bed to participate. What a trooper. The second video is from breakfast. Sally played a song on her ipod that Grandma introduced to us a couple of years ago. It is a very catchy tune and we always have fun with it. Aren't we so musical??? This post is getting a little bit long and complicated for me, what with all the pictures and TWO videos, so I am going to end here and continue with part two in a separate post.