The One Where Christmas is in May

Happy Tuesday everyone. I've spent the last little while feeding my Google Reader obsession (I'm up to somewhere between 90 and 95 blogs I follow now. . .) and now it's time for a Christmas Update.

. . . . . . .

What?

"But Sarah!" you say. "It's May!"

True. My family, for whatever reason, doesn't do Christmas ON Christmas anymore. (We don't do Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving either.) We were going to have it in January, but then my cousin (the one I mentioned was in the car wreck?) wouldn't have been able to make it. So the whole family, plus a couple of cousins from Massachusettes, got together at my uncle's house for barbecue and Yankee Swap.

(I didn't take any of the following pictures, FYI, except for the one of the dessert. They were either taken by my uncle, my aunt, or my SDad. Or possibly Mom, I'm not sure.)

Here's John, my little cousin who was in the car accident. He's doing a LOT better, even though he's not able to really communicate that well, or move around on his own. That sounds really bad, but trust me. MUCH better than before.My brother and sister looking. . .angry? Gangsta? I'm not sure about this one.Then there's my mother and HER siblings behaving. . .as siblings do.

And, of course, the dessert. (Crappy quality thanks to it being a camera phone photo.This is a chocolate peanut butter trifle involving chocolate cake (it was supposed to be brownies, but I didn't have the time to make them), vanilla pudding, peanut butter, and Reeses Cups. Yum. I also made deviled eggs, but didn't take a picture. (And, by the way, my sister, who's 18, said they were "Legit, the best deviled eggs she'd ever had." This is the second time she's said I made the best (whatever) she's ever had, and I take that as high, HIGH praise coming from a teenager.

Yankee Swap went. . .better than expected. I actually HATE the whole concept of YS. For the uninitiated, Yankee Swap means everyone who's playing brings a present, and they're put in a pile. Then everyone draws numbers. The first person picks a present and opens it. The second person can either open a new present or steal the present from the first person. And so on and so forth.

Makes me crazy. My OCD way of things needing to be a certain way doesn't jive with this, because if something is mine, if it's given to me, then it's MINE. This isn't to say I'm selfish. . .it's not that I want everything. It's that if something's mine, it belongs to me. I'll share it, but it goes home with me.

So, needless to say, it's a very, very frustrating game for me. I'll play it, but it's frustrating. I ended up with this really, really ugly chicken (I'll have to put a picture of this thing up. It's UGLY. And a leopard-print Snuggie.

Excellent.

D got this foam thing to put on the wall that says (I think) BAM! It's like the sound effects drawn in old comic books? It's kind of awesome. (That does not mean, however, that when he started to put it on the wall right beside the front door, I didn't go, "Um, how about over here?" and put it on the wall beside the bathroom around the corner. It's cute and kitschy and I like it, but not in the main foyer of my living area.

So that was Christmas. Sounds like we'll be doing it in May from here on out.