The Christmas party

What a fun Christmas day party. I had been aiming for that Charles Dickens feeling when Scrooge asks Fred for his forgiveness and if he can come to the Christmas day party with all of Fred's fun friends.

Fancy china and wine glasses and everyone crowded round a festive table with plenty of food and alcohol and beverages to sample, our guests where wonderful and interesting people we have known for years. Some of my family attended. Conversation flowed. A friend gave me a great compliment once about how she enjoyed my parties because they never had just the same old crowd we always hang with. There were new people to talk to and meet. New stories and lives to hear about. Our parties are entertaining. This particular group of friends were a wonderful combination that kept the laughter and conversation loud and boisterous.



Everyone brought lovely holiday brews to sample. I had also gone to the liquor store to stock a variety for the party. I didn't buy the big bottles I used to because I didn't want a lot of booze sitting around later, but the mid size bottles were still a large variety to sample. Everyone could find something they would like. This season the new beverage is a chocolate vodka that is delectable. I put milk in mine for a richer cocktail flavor. I also sampled glog which was a delightful spiced muled wine concoction. Then there was the home made baileys to try from another guest . Thank goodness I don't do beer because they also came with their own home brew to try which went over well with the beer drinkers in the crowd, everyone knowing that we only serve Bud light.



Trevor and I had also spent Christmas eve afternoon making home made eggnog from the family recipe. My father loved my mom's home made eggnog. Mom has passed on the recipe to us. Trevor has fallen in love with the unspiked version which is so superior to the store bought, it isn't even the same thing at all. Whipped egg whites and whipped whip cream folded into a glass punch bowl full of other wonderful ingredients creating a frothy creamy concoction to corrode your arteries. We spike the adult version with Bourbon, but you can also use rum. I had set aside half for the children. Trevor and I made a double batch.

Riley had three glasses. We had also had a party Christmas eve. Just a small one with another couple. Between the day before, an early Christmas eve impromptu party, and the Christmas day party, there wasn't much left of the eggnog, adult or children's version.


It was after 11:00 pm when the guests finally had to go home. Tom plugged in a movie for my sister and her friend who would be spending the night so they wouldn't be drinking and driving. I headed up to bed completely inebriated from all the wonderful various concoctions I had been sampling. Shortly after I found the need to lie on the bathroom floor wrapped in a blanket waiting to puke up my lovely evening. After waiting miserably for the regurgitation I took some Pepto Bismo that would either cure me one way or the other. Twenty minutes later my dinner was gone from my system and I had lost a little weight. The advantage to this whole miserable segment is I woke with no hang over from my mixing beverages and over indulging. I was slow but fully functional. I was also grateful for another quirk in our house, the heated tiles on the floor of my bathroom. I don't know how they turn off or on, but laying on that hard floor I was grateful for that radiant heat, even as I bemoaned my miserable state.

Tom came to bed after watching the new planet of the apes movie and then Troy with my sister and her friend. Both movies were long. It must have been close to 4:00am. My sister found great humor in the next episode. The morning alarms started going off around 5:00am on all the cell phones in the living room. There were three in the room where she was trying to sleep, each set to a different time. The alarms would repeat on snooze.

The result was the phones ended up on the front porch outside so she could sleep. Then Tom's phone alarm started going off in our bedroom. Tom was so sound asleep that my shouting at him to turn off the alarm didn't rouse him. Downstairs, our guests started giggling having just dealt with three of these alarms themselves. My sister told me she could hear me yelling at Tom to turn off the alarm. I was laying in bed in no mood to move my head, to have to rise to a vertical position and walk around the bed to find the culprit alarm, to deal with the alarm myself. I finally swatted Tom to rouse him enough to deal with the alarm on his side of the bed. It was comic to everyone trying to sleep in the room below ours.

In the morning, my sister's friend said she would make breakfast for us, but first the kitchen needed to be cleaned from the party the day before. All those pretty wine glasses and dishes needed to be washed and stacked away from the kitchen. I have yet to figure out where I will store them as the dishes and wine glasses came out of packing boxes and I don't have a good home for them. They still sit on the serving table waiting for a permanent home. But it took three hours of cleaning to get to that stage while my sister and I sat and watched her friend steadily work through the mess of the feast from the day before. It was a lovely gift to me to have someone clean up for me. I told them it would have taken me days to do it all myself.

Three hours later we were served fried potatoes from the left over mashed potatoes, from the night before, scrambled eggs, bacon, and rolls. It was a delightful late afternoon brunch. Tom found a football game on the TV. We all just hung out.

Some time during the clean up one of our guests from the day before stopped by. I had mentioned the mini fridge I had given Tom and that the boys will be wanting one in the dungeon.She was discarding one. I look out the window to see her carrying a fridge down my front steps. A woman after my own heart, not one to sit and let an opportunity slip away when there is a project to accomplish, she was delivering to the boys her spare mini fridge. As she dropped it off though she said it was in trade. She wanted to take home some of Tom's gravy from the Christmas dinner the day before. A compliment to the chef, Tom's gravy is worth it.

We watched one more movie, Kingdom of Heaven, before my sister had to leave. She had to work the next day. I still have the week home with my boys. Not that I will even see them with their new dungeon with High Def TV and enough violent shoot em up x box game to keep them busy all week. I had them invite a couple of friends over to spend the night and play so at least they weren't completely anti social. They tried to pull all nighters like Tom, but I told them they could play until midnight. They were up with those early alarms for a few hours in the morning before their teen bodies told them to sleep. I let them sleep during the morning. The four boys were up and in the dungeon again once they woke.

I am looking forward to tackling that space. I will need to research dropped ceilings as all the wiring runs on the bottom of the ceiling joists instead of through them in he basement. Plus the heating ducts hang down and will need to be framed around.

Our next project is bringing in gas to the house. Next year we need a fireplace along with our remodeled kitchen. Meanwhile I will whittle away at the inexpensive stuff and more unpacking.