I’d actually meant to post on Christmas with some heartwarming story like I did last year…I even had a few anecdotes in mind, but then things got busy and I got too involved in hanging out with Mr. W’s huge family and playing board games and eating. =)

Friday after work, I met Mr. W and his daughter at my house and we flew off to Vegas, just as fast as a car could fly, and arrived at his parents’ house a bit past 8pm. Toward the beginning the 4-hour car ride, his daughter took a 20 minute nap, then awoke, looked around, and asked hopefully if we’re almost there yet. Her dad laughed at her. “We’re still 3 hours away!” he informed her. There was a disappointed gurgle from the back seat. “I didn’t sleep that long, then,” she said miserably. When we finally got there, stopping just once for $6.99 prime rib at Stateline, I met his aunt and uncle who were visiting from the windy city of Chicago, hung out with his parents a bit. There was more of the same the day after, and then Christmas Eve, the entire household filled up with cousins, brothers, sisters, generations and generations of W-folk. Lots of food later, Mr. W’s mom and her 2 sisters played Yatzee at the dinner table; we played Cranium at the “kiddie” table, boys (Mr. W and his 2 brothers) against the girls (me, Mr. W’s daughter, the daughter of Mr. W’s rocker brother). Unfortunately, the boys won. I have no idea how that happened; all I remember is that I couldn’t correctly spell “anecdote” backwards. Mr. W’s rocker brother read the word to me pronouncing it “ana-SEE-doe” and I spelled it “anecdone.” EH??? Let’s just blame it on the alcohol that I didn’t have.

The final event of the evening had layers of people sitting around the living room like we’re at a mini stadium, and presents were distributed. We filled 2 large black garbage bags of wrapping paper between the 20 or so people plus the prettiest baby and a little fuzzy house doggie. In that r0om that night, the feeling was almost tangible: we knew that, at least between those of us there, we kept the warm spirit of commercialism alive.

Mr. W’s family is great; they always make a point of coming around and greeting me with a warm hug, and always had made me feel included in their festivities. I know from other experiences that even family can get clique-ish, but in this family, everyone was everywhere, no one was left out.

We left Vegas early Christmas morning, dropped off Mr. W’s daughter at her mom’s house (where her mother chatted with us excitedly about her first turkey ever that she made the night before, making me realize that that’s the one thing we didn’t have at Mr. W’s parents’, and I may have drooled a little bit). Then Mr. W and I trotted over (as fast as cars can trot) to my parents’ house for Christmas Day lunch. Lunch was hot pot, healthy and oil-free which was perfect after the pies, cookies and rich foods of the weekend. (I should talk — I brought them a giant candy wreath.) My mother cleverly scheduled my dad’s colonoscopy exam for today, the day after Christmas, which means my dad can’t have anything except clear broths and water the day before the exam. And my mom made my dad work the hot pot and help serve us anyway. He was very good-natured about it, and we kept telling him to drink the broth, but he stubbornly refused to, wanting to err on the side of caution for his exam. I don’t know how you can not eat all day, and then drop crab, lamb, pork, beef into a huge boiling broth, plop in mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, clams, tofu, vermicelli noodles, chopped turnips, etc., stir stir stir and keep spooning it out for the people around you, and not want to eat any of it.

The funny thing is that on Christmas Eve, a bunch of us sat around the living room chatting and Mr. W’s rocker brother was saying something about how men should never buy women appliances for Christmas, he’d learned that lesson well, and Mr. W said that’s a dumb rule, and I thought about my friend’s Christmas present dilemma with her current boyfriend, and it turns out that Mr. W’s parents got me an electric jar opener and my parents got Mr. W a hot water boiler/dispenser (yes, the fobby one that every Asian has in their kitchen with boiling water for tea ready at the push of a button). I love my jar opener, and Mr. W loves his hot water dispenser. It’s also funny that Navy Girl Vanessa and I were emailing just Friday about how she heard there was an electric jar opener and she would’ve gotten me that one instead of the hand opener had she found the electric one in the store, and I said I’d never seen such a thing, maybe the person who told her about it meant an electric CAN opener. Oh well, now I have both and I can see which one works better for me. Methinks I may have been complaining too audibly about my inability to open jars. 🙂