![](http://"http://static.flickr.com/84/261697034_7aee0845b7_o.jpg")
Merry merry
I'm proud of us. We actually did very well in keeping it simple. Jim got me a pair of slippers, which I had requested and needed badly and I got him a pair of hiking pants (too small) and a sale LLBean shirt (too big). The kids got some brightly colored flashing stuff, but are most happy with their giant wagon. And in all, I can say it was one of our better holidays in a long time. As a friend told me last week, when you're not expecting much and you don't get much it's like the first rule in the Conservation of Poverty. Okay, I just made that up, but it reminds me of something Erin would say. A little bit of truth and a little bit out there.
We spent the evening at my in-laws, who love to host an enormous dinner for Christmas. The kids had no interest in putting away their puzzles and gerbils and putting on their fancy tights and clean diapers, and I really didn't want to shower. But you just don't say no. So we ate their prime rib, drank many bottles of their expensive wine, and I admit it: we laughed a lot. Because everyone was pretty damn happy. The rich people got a lot of rich-people presents, and the middle class people played it simple and didn't set themselves up for disappointment. We were all sitting around the table, my niece trying to decide which of her 3 iPods to listen to when she called her super-secret 15-year-old boyfriend later to not-talk with on the phone, my brother-in-law was trying to decide which new gun to shoot at his target practice range the next morning, and I was picturing myself sheathed in my new sheepskin slippers, watching ELf on VHS for 89th time that evening on our 11" TV. So you see? It was all good.
Hope yours were happy.
Fashion-forward or fashion-retarded - either way she's a Happy Birthday Gal.
Please quit touching me. Can a sleeply little rodent get a break or what?
Christmas Eve dinner. Ahhhh. Happy oil.
See? So very Dickensian, my old slippers.
And the Montana wagon, complete with studded tires and a de-icer on the handle.
We spent the evening at my in-laws, who love to host an enormous dinner for Christmas. The kids had no interest in putting away their puzzles and gerbils and putting on their fancy tights and clean diapers, and I really didn't want to shower. But you just don't say no. So we ate their prime rib, drank many bottles of their expensive wine, and I admit it: we laughed a lot. Because everyone was pretty damn happy. The rich people got a lot of rich-people presents, and the middle class people played it simple and didn't set themselves up for disappointment. We were all sitting around the table, my niece trying to decide which of her 3 iPods to listen to when she called her super-secret 15-year-old boyfriend later to not-talk with on the phone, my brother-in-law was trying to decide which new gun to shoot at his target practice range the next morning, and I was picturing myself sheathed in my new sheepskin slippers, watching ELf on VHS for 89th time that evening on our 11" TV. So you see? It was all good.
Hope yours were happy.
Fashion-forward or fashion-retarded - either way she's a Happy Birthday Gal.
Please quit touching me. Can a sleeply little rodent get a break or what?
Christmas Eve dinner. Ahhhh. Happy oil.
See? So very Dickensian, my old slippers.
And the Montana wagon, complete with studded tires and a de-icer on the handle.
posted by Mignon at 4:04 PM
I vote your family Extremely Cute. that is all.
Ho, ho, ho what a wagon! Ours (not the all-terrain model) gets used in summer only as a mobile sand box.
My best Christmases have been "poor person" ones. Maybe I should say just about all of them have been in that mode. And I don't have any problems with the wealthier folks spreading some of the good stuff around: that's the Christmas Trickle Down Corollary to the Conservation of Poverty law.
Loved the photos. Glad you had a merry merry. :-)
Maybe it would help niece decide which ipod to listen to if she donated two of them to the Goodwill or somesuch.
I too weary of Christmas as a time of wretched excess. Can you tell?
That is some cool wagon.
I remember getting a lot of mileage out of my red wagon. Even when I was probably too old to be doing so. A little imagination goes a long way with those things. And the slippers look great!
Sweet wagon and even better, the pose! My mom is a big dinner giver too, but usually that is the special gift and we don't get anything else from her.
Glad it all went smoothly for you.
The gerbs are cute, but the kids are cuter.
Glad to hear your Christmas was a merry one. :)
I think going to the rich peeps house is a great idea! Then when you get home? Your house will feel as warm and cozy and as fitting, as that wonderful slipper in the photo. Just perfect. Nothing like a not so perfect experience to make us appreciate what we do love. I would feel so lost in an enormous house where I couldn't hear my children playing, sleeping, talking,,,,,,in fact that Laura Ingalls house is damn cool. Unless you're tryin to do it.
How is it that you have my old slippers?
What the hell is a spotting scope??
I have sheepskin slippers from last year and got new PJs and a robe this year and LIFE IS GOOD.
Wagons and slippers and hiking clothes and family and laughing and bread and oil and all those simple things are the stuff that real Christmases are made of!