My weekend in a nutshell

Almost there...this is the true downtime before the holiday, except in my case I'm still knitting. I'm crazy.

So this weekend was my parents' open house, which was a blur as usual. Being very pregnant meant I was the topic of conversation all by myself--I didn't have to think very much about what to say because I was inundated with "when are you do what are you having have you picked out names what do the girls think?" None of those questions bother me, and the only person with the huevos to actually touch the belly was my cousin Joe and that was fine.

Not much to report--Mike and Maloki spent the whole evening playing my parents' Wii on the third floor, which meant they were the kid magnet. Somehow word got out that there was fake bowling on TV to participate in, and my little cousins (the generations are spread pretty wide on my dad's side--I'm the oldest cousin, and the youngest is 8, and above when I say "cousin Joe," he's really my dad's cousin even though he's only 4 years older than I am) all trotted up to find Mike. The whole evening--we left at a quarter to one in the morning, Maeve still going strong.

Maeve sang her solo from the school program: This little nose of mine, I'm going to let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

I got to hear my uncle Joe (that would be cousin Joe's father, married in) refer to himself as a "dago" twice to Bevin's boyfriend.

My grandmother left wearing Fran's coat (Fran is her daughter-in-law), thus creating a large amount of accusatory havoc when it was Fran's time to go. But Penny (grandmother) owned up to the mistake and had my cousin Adam take her real coat to her when he left (along with her "wallet" in the pocket, which is, of course, a credit card, license, and several hundred cards and slips of paper, all rubberbanded together).

My mother was kind and did not make bourbon slush. She also did not label the bourbon fudge, however, which fooled several small children, with hilarious effect.

My mom's friend Yen brought a ton of egg rolls, good enough to prompt my uncle Pat to reminisce about the Philippines and how these were the best he'd had since he was there in the Navy. It also prompted my aunt Jackie (married to the Italian, Joe) to ask Yen what "kind of oriental" she was. And proceed to ignore the answer (Vietnamese) and refer to her as the Chinese lady the rest of the night.

So it was a good time. There are people I see at that party that I don't see any other time of year--some of them live out of town, some are coworkers or clients of my father's, but others I have no excuse for. My cousin Amanda lives in Shaw, for instance.

And then, on Sunday, I woke up with something that felt very familiar. Something like a hangover. But I hadn't been drinking...ugh. I went to church and then came back to pick up Mike and the girls (Sophia had a spend the night party down the street that wasn't over until 10:30). Then, it was time to get church ready for Christmas.

This is my 3rd year and I'm not comfortable being in charge of it yet. The first year, there were so many naysayers (we were decorating after the 4th Sunday of Advent, which happened to fall on Christmas Eve). Last year, I don't think I got enough people. And this year, it looked like enough people, but then.

But then they brought in the huge trees that we put behind the altar. See, the place where we get the trees called earlier in the week and said another church had cancelled their order--they had two 15 foot trees if we were interested. We always got 12 foot trees, but I thought, ok, sure. They even delivered them for us Saturday. But seeing them pulled into the church by three big guys apiece, well, they seemed really big.

They were really big. Too big. I'll just say that it took all afternoon and Mike had several un-Christmas-like things to say by the end of the process. Sr. Cathy suggested, and everyone wound up agreeing, that the stands were just too small for such trees (Mike said it was like balancing a cane on one end) and they should cut them off some. They did, creating two very full 12 foot trees. I left with my exhausted husband before Cathy had the lights on them, but I'm sure it's one of those all's well that ends well thing. I'm sure they're fine. The creche went up fine, the other trees, the poinsettias. We had enough helpers, I don't think I even accidentally hurt anyone's feelings, and I admitted that the 15 foot trees were a mistake I wouldn't repeat next year. Eh.

I slept a long long nap when I got home.

Monday night was mah jongg, and tonight, we went to Riley's for pizza. Now everyone has showered off the smoky bar smell, and guess what I'm going to go do. Knit.