THE PRESENT and Christmas Catch-up.

First – THE PRESENT. My parents live in Florida and do not get to see us (my two brothers and I) very often AND they have pretty much everything they need or want, so this year I thought it would be fun to get the three of us, and our families together for a family picture they could hang up and you know, brag to all their friends about. I pictured us looking like this:

or this:

In my head, I envisioned everything working out perfectly. My sister in law’s Dad could take the photos at her house; we would get it developed, find a frame, ship it to Florida and make my parents cry. (The way you know you hit a home run in gift giving).

The day we finally got together for the picture was a Friday night, of course after working all day, I felt I could have looked better, but I feel that way all the time so nothing new there. We didn’t color coordinate and I begged my son to PLEASE wear the nice collared shirt for the picture and he gave me 60% of the hard time I figured he would. I didn’t even bother begging the hubby to wear anything in particular knowing I would never win that battle.

We arrived at my brother’s house and were faced with exactly what I thought we would be. I think my family and I are pretty cute, but my brother and his family, well they have all hit their most beautiful this year. My brother is in the best shape of his life, thin and looking amazing, my sister in law, ditto as usual. My neice and nephew at 15 and 16, look like they walked out of an Abercrombie catalog ad. Then walks in my other brother and kids with his years younger gorgeous wife. The boys had burgundy sweaters and plaid shirts and the girls had black sweaters and plaid shirts. Their kids at 13 and 14 are in no way awkward.

The picture taking began and my thoughts were as follows:

Oh, yeah put me on the end so maybe I will get cut off.


Oh God, keep sucking it in, shoulders down, sexy smile, where do I put my hands??


That is my son complaining over there, too bad he is too far away to kick.


Oh, the hubby’s humor right now is enough to make me want to drink HEAVILY.


Please let there be one picture where I outshine the rest of these people. I know, I am asking for a miracle or at the very least a big smudge wiping everyone else out.


If my daughter sticks her tongue out like she did in my brother’s wedding photo, I’ll kill her.


Then the camera batteries died and we were done.

When it was all said and done, the picture turned out OK and I think there were some tears.

Christmas Catch-up:

The day before Christmas Eve, I cleaned and decorated the house from 6am til 1am, did my best not to yell too much and thought I was having a heart attack only once. I would have swore the hubby and I would be divorced by today though.

I attempted to make my traditional peppermint pound cake for the kids which resulted in having to open all the windows to release the black smoke coming from the oven, my having to cut a square of cake out of the pan, throwing the pan in the garbage, and using the GREEN frosting I accidently bought instead of white. It tasted OK as long as you ate it with your eyes closed.

Christmas Eve morning we discovered our furnace had died. 17 people were coming over at 3pm. Thankfully a combination of lots of candles, two gas fireplaces, the dryer, the dishwasher and the oven had the house toasty warm and no one knew how cold it could really get. Today is Monday and the furnace has yet to be fixed.

The party was a pretty good success, learned that next year we will have it later, serve heavy hors d’eourves and desserts only instead.(That’s all people like anyway) and my hard work of cleaning and decorating was worth it.

Christmas Eve night I got two hours of sleep. The kids had us up at 2:15am, 3:30am, 4:30am and then I had to WAKE them up at 6:30am!!

We were heroes for the next two days, and the hubby broke our promise by getting me gifts when we said we weren’t going to and hit a home run in gift giving. We are no longer on the road to divorce. Thank god, because I was about to think that psychic may have been right….