We have a full house these days: the regular five residents, plus the brothers, plus one brother's girlfriend. The amazing thing is that the house is very quiet right now. In fact, it's been relatively quiet in general. Any of you that know my family in person realize how strange that is.
Yesterday, we celebrated my father's birthday (the big six-o!) with lunch at the Palace Cafe and cake with friends in the evening. We were lucky enough to snag a Berry Chantilly cake from Whole Foods - the same kind we got a couple of months ago for MrMan's baptism.
The day before, we did Christmas. Again, any of you that know my family in person realize how strange that is. Growing up as a Baha'i, I didn't do Christmas. Yes, I recognized that it was a celebration of the birth of Christ, but it wasn't my holiday. My parents generally gave each of us one gift and then we hung out, usually with at least one movie. This year we had a Christmas tree. Seven feet tall, with real wee pine cones and blinking lights. Only our second tree as a married couple. The first under my parents' roof since I was three and convinced them that a tree was essential to my well being. I was nervous about MrMan trying to push it, or unwrap the gifts, but all went fine. It was rather amazing to me how big a pile of gifts was under the tree, considering that there are only 1.5 Christians in the house (2.5 once brother's girlfriend arrived). So we unwrapped oodles of presents while eating baked oatmeal (yum!), ate lunch at Five Happiness (in honor of my parents' tradition of eating there on Christmas, though since we ate lunch instead of dinner, we didn't see the friends - who are Jewish - they usually see), and had dinner at home with a couple of friends (ham, gumbo, tofurkey, veggies, kingChristmas cake...).
MrMan was a bit overwhelmed by all the presents he received. So many new toys. So many new clothes. We broke it down into four unwrapping sessions over 24 hours, but it was still a bit much. No melt downs, just fatigue. Which means long naps. Which means happy me.
Today and the rest of the week, I'm enjoying hanging out and seeing old friends. And I get to hang with Sam - he started the job two weeks ago, and now gets off from Christmas to New Year's. How awesome is that?!
Posted by Shokufeh at December 27, 2006 05:38 PMWe understand the present fatigue issue very well here! Between Christmas and Birthday presents, Camille was pretty exhausted and even ended up taking 2 1 1/2 hour naps!!
Enjoy the family time!
Posted by: Emily at December 27, 2006 11:30 PM