Christmas 2008

It's come and gone in a hurry. I swear it was just yesterday that I was still shopping. Oh wait, I was....not for gifts but for sugar.

I knew I had to make two desserts for each of the houses that we'd be visiting on Christmas, Yiayia's marshmallow cake and baklava. I had the butter out to soften for the cake and I started to measure out the sugar for the baklava syrup. That's when I realized I might not have enough for both desserts. Uh-oh. Even if I had figured it out Christmas Eve, no one was open after 6pm, so I'd have been in the same bind.

So DJ and I went out in search of sugar. I knew the Kleins Supermarket would be closed on Chrismtas Day but I thought that maybe the Safeway might be open for a few hours. No such luck. But sometimes, a 7-11 has odd things other than snacky-snack-type foods, and our local 7-11 had a few boxes of sugar. Perfect. The men that were hanging out in the 7-11 were drinking coffee, shooting the breeze, and all marveled at DJ's hair wishing they all had hair like that and reminiscing of the time when they did. All in all, pretty hilarious. 7-11 FTW on Christmas Day.

When we got home, it was time to open gifts. DJ hasn't quite figured out what opening gifts is about, so I spent time trying to show him that he can rip the paper off. He did enjoy taking the tissue paper out of the gift bags and then stuffing it back in them. ("What has baby found? Another piece of tissue paper! Wave it all around! " from the Wrapping Paper Romp book) On a side note, DJ also knows that Santa says "Hoooh!", and we read a picture book about Christmas a number of times this month. I'm hoping that he'll get what gifts mean by his birthday in March but I think he'll be all about Christmas in 2009.

Elektra, meanwhile, hung out in the swing watching us open gifts. Steve spent most of his time taking DJ's toys out of the packaging. What is it with packaging these days that requires brain surgery to extract the toy?? Didn't the old addage use to be that the choice words were dropped in toy assembly, not toy extraction from its packaging?

After toys were unwrapped, we watched Wall-E on blu-ray. Boy is Pixar making a statement with that movie but very good nonetheless! Anyway, DJ sat, literally sat on the floor, and actually watched the first half an hour of Wall-E. He never has an attention span for TV, so this was quite remarkable! During the parts of Wall-E I had seen, I prepped the baklava and after the movie was over, baked the cake.

Both DJ and Elektra had lunch and went down for naps early. I finished the cake and the baklava and sat down to take a breather before all the real craziness would begin. Sure enough, DJ woke up early from his nap, so let the craziness begin.

We got to George's house an hour late. This was after the baklava leaked on me in the car. ARG! I had wanted to drop it off to Tim's on the way to George's for exactly that reason, but we couldn't reach Tim by phone to confirm that we could do that. At least it was a tasty ride to George's.

George had a great feast prepared. Deep fried turkey (which was prepped in a brine the night before), spanakopita, ham, new england clam chowder, salad, Greek potatoes, cranberry sauce, asparagus, bread and Greek stuffing, and hors devours, including garlic stuff kalamata olives. Awesome! Everything was delicious, especially the deep fried turkey! YUM! Dessert included pumpkin custard, marshmallow cake and assorted cookies.

Gifts were exchanged by all and then Steve and I were off to Tim's house with the leaky baklava and all. Unlike George's, Tim's house was a zoo of people, as to be expected with this family! DJ and Elektra got tons more gifts! By 9:15pm and 4 million flights of stairs later, DJ was exhausted (but he still wanted to continue to climb the stairs!). We packed the kids in the car and headed home. Both children went to bed without nary a fuss, and both were still sleeping when I left this morning. I hope they're being good for Steve today!

The day was exhausting but wonderful. Merry Christmas!