Same tree, same crap, I mean, same BEAUTIFUL stuff

A couple weekends ago, we decorated our parents Christmas tree. I do believe we out did ourselves this year.

We found the beautiful Styrofoam ball with three dots of glitter left that my mom always tries to hid from us. She said, "What until you have kids..." I have kids. One of whom made a beautiful blue glitter Styrofoam ball that he promptly dropped on the floor and got glitter in between my floor boards that I'll never get out. The ball is hanging on our tree and the boy is forbidden to touch it, to think about touching it, or look at it.

Even better than the Styrofoams ball (what says Christmas more than glittery Styrofoam?) was this yellow ornament I found in the box. Apparently, its actually a twist-tie, but it was in the box so it was fair game.

And this ornament I found in the box that my mom said, "Don't go in that box. There's just junk in there." Open invitation. If she really didn't want us in that box, she wouldn't have said anything about its contents.

My new concept in decorating - try the ornament out for the season, if you don't like it, take it back. Just leave it in the bag! As an added bonus, you'll never have to dust your ornaments, just shake the bag off at the end of the season.

After all our treasures where on the tree (my dad and uncle were going to contribute the yule beer cans later), we crawled under and screamed Silver Bells until Rudy cried. Ditty's friend from college even got to share in the family fun.

Swedish Cooking for the Sophisticated Urbanite

Ziz, who fries everything (seriously, fish, zucchini, green tomatoes) in butter flavored Crisco has been insisting that us Swedes are weird since she arrived. We are weird because we eat lefsa (technically, that's Norwegian, but its still darn good), Lutefisk (what's wrong with cod soaked in lye with some nice white sauce? And boiled potatoes, can't forget the boiled potatoes), and pankakor (egg pancakes - they are delicious).

But we throw down tonight. Zippy used my great grandma's recipe and made Swedish meatballs. Yeah, she's coming around. Lutefisk here we come!

Christmas Tree Decorating

Every year we put up the Christmas tree Thanksgiving weekend. It used to be Thanksgiving day as soon as we got home from Grandma and Grandpa whoever's house, but now we have a 7 PM bedtime to think about. We'd pull the tree out of the box (artificial all the way), throw on the ugliest ornaments we could find (you know, the crap you made in kindergarten), and then crawl under the tree and scream Christmas carols at the top of our lungs. Silver bells has always been a favorite.





Not much has changed. We are our all older, but we still come home to put up my parent's tree on or about Thanksgiving day. We still crawl under the tree and scream (last year, Baba was terrified of our, um, singing. This year he thought it was hilarious). And we still find the ugliest kindergarten crap we can find. Pickings were slim this year as my stinking mother has started to throw away/hide some of our "best" work. We'll make up for it throughout the Christmas season by putting various crap (empty beer cans is always a favorite) on the tree.





Nothing like a family tradition to put in you in the holiday spirit.

A Very Merry Pretend Christmas to You!

Today is pretend Christmas! We are celebrating with my family today because Ditty and Poonch II will be in Indiana with Poonch II's family for the real Christmas.

Because it is pretend Christmas we can pretend to dress up. I'm wearing jeans and a sweatshirt but pretending I'm wearing an evening gown and looking smashing.

Gobble, gobble!

My family is all about tradition. There is the tradition of laying under the Christmas tree and singing (yelling) Christmas carols as loud as we can. There is the tradition of my mother never putting our names on our Christmas presents, only a code (one year Ditty was all prime numbers and I was numbers that weren't prime, etc).

We also like to play "fun" games. Ditty started a "fun" game where you put a deck of cards into four piles, cout to three, and then everyone grabs a pile. Lots of fun. There is also Bing-offs. Which is really an abbreviated version of BINGO. You play until one spot on your card is covered.

But now we have a new fun game and tradition. Its called bend over and play catch between your legs until the boy laughs. Then when he doesn't think that is funny any more, you fall over. It's really quite enjoyable. Happy Thanksgiving!