Christmas 2007, R.I.P.

I sit huddled in a dark corner away from the battle. Desperately scrawling memories to record before they're lost in a haze of food, alcohol and the crush of cardboard and paper. Across the room, I see heaps of bodies surrounded by the ordinance of the day. Each pile a battle unto itself. Moans can be heard from corner from those still hanging onto a thread of consciousness. "They don't have long," I think to myself. Smoke wafts up from a lilac scented candle and it's flame flickers in the eyes of the in-laws whose only recourse is to wait silently for the end to come. Someone is piling the bodies in large piles. Webkins here. Star Wars action figures over there. Somewhere, Dora the Explorer is saying how wonderful it is to be a fucking Mexican mermaid.

Christmas...has ended.

It started with torture as Christmas did in my youth. My Dad would always wait until we were ready to open presents before "remembering" to charge his flash. It was a 3 hour charge, even though he was only going to take 5 pictures. He'd excuse himself for a smoke and 17 cups of Sanka. Today, my daughter (who is NEVER up early) was up and raring to go. She had to wait for my son (who NEVER sleeps late) to wake up. He was sleeping off a handful of grape flavored generic Tylenol for his fever. Or to be honest, it could have been a handful of Sweet Tarts. It was dark last night.

Once he finally awoke, the carnage began as they dug into the 10 presents EACH that Santa Claus brought them. Apparently, no other children got anything because these two got it all.

Around 11am, the two families of in-laws came over to join the festivities. They brought with them roughly 1000 decibels of children. The noise ordinance sign posted at the front of my in-law's condo development was weeping.

The mother-in-law trotted out some amazing food as always, but the sister-in-laws brought a bountiful harvest as well. D brought the show-stopper though, in the form of a mini-weenie, smothered in barbecue sauce and wrapped in...wait for it...bacon. This is the point in the pig's life when we're just fucking with it. "Look, not only are we going to hack you up to make mini weenies (Sorry, corn dog line over there) but then we're going to take another strip of your ass and wrap it around the mini weenie. And just in case that tastes like shit, we're going to soak it in a red sauce. Next!"

We hit the Wii jackpot, with a whopping 6 games. Including the game my boy has been crying for over the last 3 months; Super Mario Galaxy. This is a game that is rated E for everyone, but every reviewer pretty much agrees that if you haven't played every single platform game in existence, this one is going to kill you. My boy is 4.

I got my token custom made calendar that contained every picture my four year old hates, especially the one of his butt crack. That made him VERY happy. And by VERY, I mean not so much. Speaking of crack, this is the second year running that my brother in law decided to show us his ass. Last year, it was at the bowling alley, in the middle of the lane. In public. This year, we just got the pressed ham on the sliding glass door. Dear God, pass the Windex please.

It wouldn't be Christmas without injuries and the last two days accounted for several. The Father-in-law fell in the driveway and split his head open. My son fell and somehow (and how shit like this happens is beyond me) managed to wedge his hand into this folding Hot Wheels contraption. The only way he figured he was getting out, is by folding the thing up with his hand inside. He's now black and blue.

My biggest annoyance of the weekend was when all of the kids got Webkinz. I had oh so hoped to spare my children this descent into Hell to no avail. My wife (who continues to forget I have a programming degree) pushes me into getting all of the kids signed up for their WebKinz account IN THE MIDDLE OF CHRISTMAS DAY. If any of you know anything about servers go back and read that last sentence again. There was 16 million of these damn things opened on Christmas. You'll have better luck getting Hannah Montana tickets via Ticketron on fucking dial-up. As I expected, it was a total cluster. Seeing "Our Servers are screwed to hell. Please come back later." 50 times was very pleasant.

The big challenge now, is to try and get all of this stuff back home with us. The wife kept saying we are taking back less than we brought (consider that I was last to pack and could only bring enough cloths, not shoes, for a couple of days). I think we're completely screwed and the only way we're getting everything home is with a large blender.

But it is done. It was good to see the in-laws and the associated nieces and nephews, in-laws and outsiders (that's what the three of us who married in call ourselves). My family had no traditions around Christmas. Santa usually brought one present and the folks got us two, maybe three. We never did stockings, rarely did dinner, and never went to church. This family has so many traditions (like moonings) that you need a program to stay ahead of the game. Maybe that's what I'll do for next year.