Merry Christmas!!

Christmastime is here! Merry Christmas!

Becky's folks are with us this year, and we started a new tradition that really turned out fun. The game is a little like Secret Santa, with an interesting variation.

Everybody drew names to see whose gift they would buy. On the slip of paper with the names, the person was instructed to write down up to two initials of something they wanted--just the initials.

So, for example, I wrote down "Scott - C.S.", which stood for "Computer Stuff". But nobody else is supposed to know what the initials stand for, so you could really get anything that starts with C.S.: chicken soup, cheese soufflé, checkers set... you get the idea.

And so, we went around the breakfast table distributing nameslips. Becky was T.S., Luke was N.S., Eddie was M.C., Ed was N.R., and Kathleen was a simple E.

We all went to Target to buy gifts, and even saw Sharon while there, who had to be employed to help find presents for Grandpa's very difficult N.R.

After evening church, we ate dinner (a delicious beef roast), and then opened our presents. What fun that was!

Kathleen went first, and her "E" turned out to be an Enchilada from Luke! (She had wanted Earrings.) We decided there is a certain risk to only putting one initial--the field of presents are too wide open. Heck, we could have given her Eggs, and she was very close to getting EZ cheese.

Ed, whose shopping took the longest, got not the New Rod he wanted, but instead got a $0.78 New Rainponcho, a set of Nylon Rope (which he liked VERY much), and the best, the latest romance novel from Nora Roberts. We all decided that perhaps N.R. are letters that maybe we shouldn't use next year!

Becky almost got Tuna Surprise, but lucky for her, Target had none. Instead, Ed got her The Smurf, which is bound to be an entry in next year's White Elephant Party at work.

Luke got a Nerf Sword, which is exactly what he wanted in the first place. It pays to be predictable. Eddie wanted Mariah Carey, but got Madonna Celebrations instead, which we felt was a better choice than Mariah any day.

Finally, I got a Cheesy Shirt, not the Computer Stuff I really wanted, but you can't go wrong with a Sesame Street Christmas shirt, can you now?

After that, we went to bed while Becky went to midnight mass to sing. Christmas morning came early, as the boys were up again at 5:30am. We opened lots of wonderful gifts, and enjoyed a warm Christmas breakfast of Luke's scrambled eggs, haggis, Barbara Verdile's wonderful English Muffin toast with spicy pepper jelly, and some delicious English plum pudding.

And now, it is sleeting outside, so I think it will be a perfect day to stay inside and play with all our new toys.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

(Thanks to Chuck and Adolfo... the new video camera is great! I used it for the videos below.)