Well, consider it said.
After my traditional Christmas Eve pizza and the annual viewing of Arthur Christmas last night, I was in bed relatively early all things considered, which may explain why the hell I woke up at about quarter to six in the morning.
Fortunately it was early enough to send a message to Owlgirl before her flight left... because they decided that leaving on Christmas morning was the best idea. I mean, maybe it is, who knows.
Anyway, I played around on my phone for a bit, got a message back, and finally started getting ready a little after 7am.
I packed up the car (a relatively simple affair this time around) and headed off to Ma's place around 7:30.
When I got there she was deep into making ham hearts, as she'd not been feeling the best the couple of days previous. Which was fine... it's not like we had anything specific to actually do during the morning (beyond, you know, the Christmas experience). So we made a bunch of them (okay, Ma made them, I mostly got the table ready for breakfast and moved the ham hearts in and out of the oven).
And then Ma went and got ready while I made the ham and cheese croissants for breakfast. And got my very icy Iced Coffee out of the freezer. Have I mentioned that I'm kind of obsessed with chilling Iced Coffee to the point it starts to get little frozen bits in it? It's so damn good.
Anyway... we had breakfast, and because La Cousina was coming to us after lunch for a change we didn't have to rush out the door to their place, which was very pleasant. It also gave us time to just chill out, and it also meant that we had the barbeque ready to go earlier than we have done on previous years, which meant we weren't sitting down to eat at like 2pm.
So that meant it was time for presents...
Some of this is stuff I would have bought for myself in other years... and wouldn't necessarily have ended up as Christmas presents... but it's all good.
- Xanathar's Guide to Everything book
- Letters for Lucardo graphic novel
- Perryman's gingerbread men
- Lego Dimensions
- Goonies Level Pack
- Teen Titans Go Team Pack
- Teen Titans Go Fun Pack
- Powerpuff Girls Team Pack
- Powerpuff Girls Fun Pack
- Assassin's Creed Origins PS4 game
- DVDs
- Teen Wolf Season 5 (Parts 1 and 2)
- Cars 3
- Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
- Iron Man 3
- Thor: The Dark World
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Typo Disney 2018 calendar
- Hallmark Keepsake "Tink Takes A Look" ornament
- The Gourmet Entertainer - Fennel Marsala Jam and Lemon Myrtle Sticky Vinegar
To be honest, the unwrapping of presents didn't take terribly long (does it really ever?), and I thumbed through the Xanathar book when we done, while Ma showed me some of the other stuff she'd been given. Then we got the turkey and sausage meat into the barbeque and prepped everything else for lunch.
With one thing and another it really didn't take very long, and I quite literally threw together a salad dressing from some English mustard, cranberry sauce, olive oil and two different kinds of balsamic vinegar. And it was fantastic.
Also, the thing I really like about the turkey we've been getting for the past few years is that it's beautifully moist. That's usually the problem with turkey, it dries out really quickly, but this is fantastic. We also had two different kinds of sausage meat this year... the regular kind and also pork sausage meat (to be honest I'm not sure what the difference actually is, apart from the colour, but I'm guessing the pork one is all pork, whereas the regular one has different kinds of meat in it).
I'll also say that this best thing about having a warm Christmas salad is that it's nice and light and even if you eat a couple of (admittedly small) bowls, you don't feel overstuffed in the same way that traditional Christmas dinner usually makes you feel.
Having said that, we didn't have any dessert (which was awesome, see the above photo) until after 4:30pm.
I feel like I've complained about this before, but is there a reason that the TV stations don't just show back-to-back Christmas movies all day Christmas Day? I mean even if you've played them already in the lead up to Christmas, just devote at least one channel to showing decent Christmas movies. And, yeah, people probably aren't supposed to be watching TV, but it'd be nice as something just playing in the background. Having said that, SBS did play both Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away in the afternoon, although neither of them are actually Christmas movies.
We waited around until La Cousina and Princess T (and offspring Princess P) turned up just before 3pm. Little Miss P has entered the grabby stage and within about a minute of them turning up, she'd grabbed and smashed one of the glass baubles from the tree. So that's a thing that happened. Fortunately she didn't get hurt because it was more of a grab and toss, but it really happened faster than anybody was able to react to.
Have I mentioned I prefer children when they're in the very small, chubby, cuddly non-autonomous stage?
I did end up running interference between her and all the non-toddler-safe things in Ma's house for most of the visit. Which was fine, it meant that I could avoid having to comment on the lackluster gifts I got. I really need to come up with a nice way of saying "you know what, either just throw cash at me or just don't even bother with a present anymore". And I know that sounds ungrateful, but neither of the things she got me are things that I have any actual use for, so wouldn't it be better to just not.
Also, that feeling when you refer to your cousin, who is only three months older than you as "grandma" in an actual, "you have a grandchild" way, and you just feel very old.
We also had a conversation about Miss Oh, because there's drama there, which is the least expected thing ever. Princess T, drama, yes. But not Miss Oh... whether it's because she never seemed to actually speak up for herself and she's just bottled a bunch of stuff up, but, yeah, family drama.
Eventually we packed them off with their presents and settled in to watch Spirited Away... or at least I did until we reached that point where the wheels fall off the plot and I'm not really all that interested any more (and for the record, it's right after the No Face frogmonster sequence).
But once it was done we packed up some of the leftovers and I drove myself back home around 8pm. And after unpacking the car, then cramming all the leftovers into my already full fridge, I settled down and just dicked around on the laptop for a while, half watching Flash Gordon.
Well, that's it over for another year... oh, wait, that's where we came in isn't it.
Hope you all had a great Christmas as we all slide together towards the abyss that is New Years...
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