A Wonderful Day for Pictures and Family...

Being goofy while learning to play Blockus

So it's Yule time again! The time where families get together, donning their favorite ugly sweaters to gorge themselves on turkey, stuffing, and pecan pie and exchange gifts. They sit around digesting and telling stories they've told before about the cousin in jail's updated status and the years past when grandma was a go-go dancer and grandpa still had his hair, bladder control, and the ability to get a semi without the help of Viagra...

The children tear into presents leaving a sea of shredded colored paper to wade through in the living room---giving any nearby cats a place to hide (besides in the middle of the tree) and wait quite impatiently, for the perfect chance to sneak-attack your toes.

Sometimes there's a new baby to pass around and that's always fun for everybody---especially the baby's mommy!

What's with this fake tree bullshit???

If your family is anything like mine, you probably have someone (in my case, uncle Ray) who, feeling bloated and gassy and overcome by the effects of the turkey, would loosen his belt and find the nearest Lazy-Boy to occupy for the next couple hours.

***My advice to you is to go ahead and do the things you and your cousins jokingly whisper about doing to him, like decorating him like a fat and lazy Xmas tree and taking pictures while he's asleep. Pictures you will tease him with later. Pictures you will all laugh about for years to come. I wish we had taken more of those opportunities to play around with uncle Ray before he passed away...

Instead of hot cider this year, we passed around a mason jar filled with strawberry moonshine and told stories of holidays past when we were all younger, cuter, and more annoying.

I KNOW! That's what I said!!!

Ahhh...Yule... *sigh*

I can say with fair certainty, that this is the first year in a very long time that I have actually enjoyed myself after enduring the stress of sacrificing, saving, driving, traffic jams, shopping, long lines, rude and idiotic people, wrapping presents, hauling, loading, unloading, and reloading the car, etc, etc, etc.

And there's more family partying to be done tomorrow! Although tomorrow makes me a little nervous because a long distance relative of my husband's will apparently be making a not-so-happy announcement regarding his health at the get-together...

I am very grateful to have had so many great opportunities to be with loved ones and take pictures today! I had a blast and got some great shots!

I hope everyone had a Blessed Yule!