Christmas Eve with my family was pretty nice. The commute was a nightmare, however. They are doing all this work on the expressway, so we had to get off further south from my house and drive up the side streets for a bit. We drove through Calumet City which must host only the dumbest, most ignorant drivers I have come across in a very long time. Some asshole made a left turn in front of us and then the passenger had the nerve to give us a double-bird. Yea, like it was our fault his buddy couldn’t drive. We saw numerous people blow red lights, including this one person who stopped at the light, then just went straight through when no one was coming. I will never ever go that way again lest I’m feeling suicidal.
We got to my parent’s house around 4-ish. My mom was heading out to church, my dad was asleep (he had hernia surgery the day before) and my brothers were playing video games. So we took the opportunity to work on my mom’s computer (after we hacked it and changed her password since I forgot what it was). I have it set up now so that Trillian loads and connects her to AIM, Yahoo, and MSN when she logs on so she doesn’t have to worry about doing it manually. My mom is on her computer often, but she usually just checks e-mail and plays Solitaire.
There was a lot of food as always. And as always, I forgot to take pictures, but here’s a quick snap I took this afternoon of my lunch of leftovers. In addition to all the food my mom made herself, we had food catered by our favorite Polish buffet, Warsaw Inn. We usually have a ham for Christmas, but with pirogies, blintzes and polish sausage, I didn’t miss it.
After dinner we exchanged presents before my cousin took off for her friend’s house. My mom got Joe and me a set of cute snowman mugs from Target. She gave us the receipt because she knew we don’t use mugs often, but I assured her I plan to keep them and use them as decorations since I love snowmen. I had just commented on how cute those mugs were the other day when I saw them at Target too. My cousin got me some nice-smelling candles and body spray, and my parents also gave us some cold hard cashola. Joe’s officially part of the family since he got the same amount of money as I did. It’s funny how that works: before we were married, each of us would always get twice as much than the other from our own parents. Now that we’re married, we’re treated equally when it comes to presents.
My mom always does this thing called Crazy Bingo where there are gifts you can win and steal from one another, with there only being one or two that aren’t silly gag gifts. This year she had these mini stockings stuffed with (as we later found out) Wendy’s gift certificates and cash. We played Uno, and every time someone would win, they picked a stocking. The intent was that once everyone had two stockings each, they could swap stockings if they won. Well, everyone kept winning except my brother and me. So then we played Uno against each other and the game just went on and on with no end in sight. Finally I won two games in a row against him so he got the two remaining stockings by default. In essence he was the biggest loser and I teased him about it. After all the swapping, both my brothers ended up with the “good” prizes: one got two twenties and the other got a fifty in addition to the Wendy’s gift certificates that were in every stocking. I got a five and two singles and Joe got two fives and a few singles. I think the whole thing was fixed. ;)
But that’s ok because my uncle sends us these scratch-off lotto tickets every year for Christmas and my brothers didn’t get any winners, but I did! I scratched off the numbers along the left first and when I saw 2 and 24 over and over I didn’t think those could possibly be the winning numbers. So then I scratched off the winning numbers and almost died when they matched. I scratched off what the dollar values were last, hoping for a couple of thousand, but it wasn’t meant to be. $25 is still nice, however!
We didn’t end up getting home last night until after midnight. We were so tired by then we just went to bed. I slept until 11:30 am this morning which is a fantastic Christmas present. I don’t get as much sleep as I would like to on average, so it was nice being lazy. In fact, I don’t plan on doing anything today, although I am tempted to take down the decorations. I know that’s probably a bit premature since it is still Christmas day, but we’re done with all the celebrations and my home is looking just a tad too cluttered for my taste, so we’ll see how long the tree lasts.