Hi! I’m still here! I haven’t posted since before Christmas, which I know sucks, and I really have no good excuse except to say that I’ve been watching the backs of the boys’ heads while they play nonstop video games and letting Kaitlyn play way too much Nintendo DS doing lots of intellectually enriching activities with the kids, and that has kept me pretty busy.

As an overall holiday, Christmas was pretty good this year. We went to my parents’ house for Christmas Eve, which we do most years. My brother, his girlfriend, and her son were there, plus my stepbrother and stepsister, plus Dad and Jean, so it was crowded, but we had a lot of fun. We have a buffet dinner and the kids open presents, and when it gets too crazy we shoo the kids down to the finished basement to watch TV. A neighbor stopped by to drop off a gift and snapped a quick photo of everybody.

Thanks to the PR firm repping Bob Evans, I contributed a “Farmhouse Feast“  to our dinner. I have to give a shout-out to the manager of the Bob Evans restaurant on West Saginaw Highway in Lansing. I had ordered the Farmhouse Feast ahead of time and thought they said pick it up at 4:00, but they had actually said 3:00. When I walked in through the take out order door, the restaurant itself was closed and they had already put all the food away. The manager was so nice, she said if I could wait they would get everything back out and box it up for me. And then she kept apologizing to ME for making me wait, even though it was my fault for being late, and “for my trouble” she added an extra pie to the order. We gave her a $10 tip.

We had been planning to drive to Canton to my Grandma’s house on Christmas Day, but on Christmas Eve day we discovered that one of the already bald tires on the car was wobbling, making the steering wheel vibrate and everything. Yikes.  So the five of us piled into my parents’ Buick Enclave for the drive.  I could not believe that car held seven people totally comfortably.

My Grandma Culver is 84 years old and cooked the entire Christmas dinner herself. And it was so good.  We had ham and green bean casserole and her famous jello/cream cheese/pineapple salad, and because she is Greek (she’s my step-Grandma actually) she made a basic Greek salad that we all loved. Kaitlyn kept picking the tomatoes out of my salad and eating them herself.

As for the Christmas presents this year – well. Guess what I did? Nathan and I went shopping on Black Friday and I bought Ryan Fallout:New Vegas for the Xbox.  And then put it…somewhere. I have searched all of my usual gift hiding places, when it didn’t turn up in any of those, I started looking in non-usual places, like in the cabinet under my bathroom sink and the top shelf of the linen closet.

People, that game is GONE. It has been swallowed up by this house.  I felt so bad I used Amazon gift cards to buy him another copy, which I will put directly into his hands when the package arrives.  When I hide something, I hide it GOOD.

My Stepmom bought me Britney Spears Midnight Fantasy perfume. I’m not sure what Britney Spears’ Midnight Fantasies are exactly, but the perfume smells like fruit. Like…blueberry gum.

She bought Kaitlyn a Fur Real Kitty, have you seen these things? It’s a big stuffed cat with a battery pack, and it not only purrs, it responds to pats on the head by rolling over on it’s back so you can pet it’s tummy. And it lifts a paw and wipes it’s face! We were all taking turns with it on our laps

The top gift of 2010, the hit toy of the year by far, is the Zoobles that my Stepmom bought Kaitlyn. Zoobles are little plastic creatures that start out rolled up in a ball, and there’s a magnetized spot on the bottom. When you touch the Zooble to it’s “Happitat” (yes, really), it pops up to reveal a bird or fish or cat or, well, some of them it’s hard to tell WHAT they are supposed to be. Kaitlyn took them to Grandma Culver’s to play with before dinner, and everyone started playing with them. My Aunt, my Uncle, the boys, Chris. Zoobles are fun for all ages

So yeah, that was Christmas 2010.  More photos are on my Flickr, send me a friend request if you’re on it too and we aren’t already friends there.

Coming up next – I’ll tell you about how I bought a significant piece of my childhood for practically nothing on eBay!