An Exciting Christmas Adventure

I know, I know I'm late, but even though it's winter break, it's been anything but a break.  I feel like I've been going and going without too much of a break.  Better late than never though, I can finally talk about our wonderful Christmas together.

In my family, Christmas starts on Christmas Eve.  According to Byzantine Catholic customs, we don't eat meat or dairy on Christmas Eve, which pretty much means I starve.  Growing up, we all piled into my grandparents' house where we ate fish, tater tots, pirogis, and steamed vegetables.  Since I don't like fish or pirogis, I usually ate tater tots.  Afterwards, we'd all part ways and go to our respective churches for liturgy, after all getting changed at my grandparents' house, which was always chaos.  For the past ten or so years, my grandparents have been too old to cook dinner for 14 people, so my aunt took over for them, and we all went to her house instead.  Around that time, we also decided we should also go to church together at St. Rose of Lima, the local Roman Catholic Church about five minutes from my house.

While Bryan joined us for dinner since our first Christmas together, last year and this year, he also joined us at St. Rose for Mass.  This had me absolutely over the moon, as he's part of the family and should be with us.  Unfortunately, the new medication my dad is on had him not feeling too well, so my mom took him home after dinner so he could rest, and she stayed with him.  They were greatly missed, although it was wonderful to have most of the family together.  I even got a picture of Bryan and I to prove he dressed up.

Typically, Bryan and I spend Christmas dinner with my family before heading over to his oldest brother's house for dessert and presents.  This time, however, we flip flopped the plans and went to his oldest brother's first for brunch, presents and dinner.  Brunch was a delicious affair with Bryan's entire family there.  His five year old niece, of course, was beside herself and absolutely couldn't wait to open presents.  Usually by the time we get there, most of the presents are open, and she only has our presents to open.  This time, however, we got to watch her open all her presents.  His one year old nephew was getting more into Christmas also.  Last year he was only a month old, so he mostly slept through Christmas.  This year, he was able to open his presents and play with his toys.  After his niece opened what she thought were all her presents, Bryan surprised her with another one: a five foot tall teddy bear.  There's a bit of a story behind this.  For a few years after she was born, Bryan would get her a teddy bear, each one progressively bigger than the last.  Eventually, however, his sister-in-law said no more teddy bears until they got a bigger house.  Well, they got a bigger house this past summer, so we were able to get her a giant teddy bear.  This is the last one we're getting her, as it's absolutely huge.  Right now, it's in her bedroom with the rest of the giant teddy bears Bryan got her, although I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually moved to the basement.

After a delicious dinner with Bryan's family and his sister-in-law's family, we headed over to my house for dessert with my family.  Bryan's parents joined us too.  While they've met my parents before, this was the first time they'd met my extended family.  Everyone got along great, not that I was worried.  Typically after dinner, my brother, cousins and I settle down for a random movie.  I have no idea how this weird tradition started, but we've been doing it for quite some time now.  There's no rhyme or reason to the movie we pick, and the parents usually filter in at random moments to add their own commentary.  This year, however, we broke tradition and instead decided to play a board game.  They'd already played "Super Fight" before I got there, and we decided to play "Pandemic" when Bryan and I got there.

Unlike most board games, "Pandemic" is a cooperative game, meaning everyone works together and either you all win together or all lose together.  The premise is fairly straightforward: four different diseases are spreading all over the world, and you are part of a team determined to find the cure and stop the spread of the diseases.  While there are many ways to lose, there's only one way to win: discover the cure for all four diseases.  You do this by collecting cards of different colors and get to a research station to create the cure.  While you do this, the diseases spread at an increasingly rapid pace.  If there are too many outbreaks, you run out of cards or run out of the little cubes that represent how much of the disease is in a particular city, then you all lose the game.  Like I said, there are many ways to lose but only one way to win.  It's a great game to play; it seems overly complicated but really isn't.  Plus, you can explain as you play since you're all working together.  We ended up winning, although we were cutting it pretty close.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the game; even one of my aunts played while the other watched.  Hopefully this is the start of a new tradition after dinner on Christmas.

Even before my Pop-Pop passed away two and a half years ago, we started taking family pictures after dinner and dessert on Christmas.  This was pretty much the only holiday the entire family was together, so it was the perfect opportunity for all sorts of pictures.  Since Bryan's parents were there, we were even able to get a picture of the entire family.  Well, almost everyone.  Once again, Dad wasn't feeling well, so he rested upstairs.  Mom's talking about having another family gathering soon so we can do pictures all over again.  After family pictures were done, I dragged Bryan into the living room to get a nice picture of the two of us in front of the tree.  You can't really see the tree, but that's okay, I still think it's a wonderful picture.

After our first Christmas together, Bryan and I started opening our presents together just the two of us.  It's much more relaxed and peaceful.  We usually open a bottle of wine and take turns opening presents and simply enjoying each other's company.  It's the perfect way to end one of my favorite holidays.  We were able to spend time with both our families, plus plenty of time together too.  I couldn't have asked for more.