Feliz Chanukah!

 I won't lie - by this time last night, I was seriously considering never hosting ANYTHING ever again. Not that we did anything extraordinary yesterday for Christmas - just had another family over for Christmas dinner in the late afternoon, a family I was thrilled to celebrate the holiday with. And I did let everyone in my family laze around for a few hours in the morning, because hey, I'm not a monster.

See? We opened presents and everything.

But after that? I spent pretty much the rest of the day ordering people around. It's not that the kids weren't helpful (hey, I didn't even TOUCH a potato, and there were 10 pounds of them to wash, and cut, and cook, and mash); but bossing people around is still work, that's for sure. Throw in the fact that I had to cook a few extra items I forgot to prepare ahead of time (hello, roasted brussel sprouts!), and it sort of pushed me over the edge.

I just don't know if I'm doing our annual New Year's Day party, is what I'm saying. I'm tired. On the other hand, the house is already pretty clean, so it would be silly not to.

I didn't even take any pictures of people yesterday. NONE. Way to go, Mom!

Speaking of photos, Brian won the prize this Christmas for the most awesome gift ever. He went through ALL the photos on my computer, dating back to 2009, deleted the duplicates and bad ones, and then uploaded them to my Google account. 12,000 PHOTOS, PEOPLE. He's my hero.

Larry, on the other hand, gift wrapped this and proudly gave it to me:

Yes, Virginia, that IS a shovel

Long-time readers might just be reminded of the windshield scraper Christmas. I certainly was. Larry redeemed himself, however, by also handing me a gift card to a local yarn store. This was particularly noble of him, considering that he has been literally tripping over bags and baskets of yarn in our bedroom lately. He also bought me some yummy chocolate:

I'm pretty sure Susie had a hand in selecting these

In return, the kids and I bought Larry a new TV. The boys sneaked out and bought it (with cash, so Larry wouldn't see it on the credit card) while Larry and I were at our annual Christmas cocktail party. Then Brian played sick when we went to Mass on Sunday, so he could stay behind and set it up and put a big bow on it. Oh, we're so clever!  We all giggled madly as we trooped downstairs to watch the Grinch that night, and were sitting expectantly on the couch as Larry walked in the room.

He didn't notice. He was busy trying to figure out where he was going to sit and had his back to the TV and we finally all had to shout, "Turn around!" Then, the entire time we watched the Grinch, we were exclaiming about how much better the color was on the new TV.

What I'm trying to say here is, we're a pretty simple family. And by simple, I mean boring.

I may not have any people pictures, but I have these:

Not-dead-yet flowers

FESTIVE, yet functional

I ate these darn things ALL DAY yesterday
(and, uh, today)

The week between Christmas and New Year's is the time to
complete unfinished knitting projects. I'm on it.

It wasn't until this morning, as I was sitting in my kitchen and reveling in the thought that I wouldn't have to cook AT ALL today, that I noticed I had overlooked something during the previous day's party preparation. Below is what greeted my guests as they walked into my home for our Christmas celebration:

If they were confused, they sure didn't show it.

Hostess of the year, that's me.