Quality Family Time

The snow and ice have slowed me down from properly documenting December.

The festivities of Christmas Eve were shortened considerably as some of us were working hard to get the Room Makeover complete.

We did stop long enough to have our annual fondue.

Nothing very fancy. PhilBillPaul and I were preoccupied with our unfinished project upstairs.

I snapped a few pictures. We almost forgot the chocolate fondue.

Thank goodness Roger Leroy dumped a bag of frozen strawberries in a bowl and sliced up a banana. Very sad.

And they all got to open that one traditional gift. I think I’ll make an album of 20 years of them sitting on the couch with one present on Christmas Eve.

Then they kindly modeled their new pajamas. The Grunter made sure they sat in birth order.

Side note: This photo was a reenactment of an actual moment just after they put on their pajamas. Scary Baby’s face is expressing her displeasure at being the only 6th grader on the planet without a cell phone. Next year we are starting a new tradition of a NO cell phone holiday.

Game Time

We all love games and I am proud of passing that tradition with the kids. We’ve had kids over that have never played any board games with their family. The times all six of us are together to play is rare with college and work schedules so I really do treasure the times we can play games together.

We were all too tired on Christmas Day to play anything. Finally we pulled it together to play on the day after Christmas.

The completed chalkboard wall screamed “Family Pictionary” and we promised Scary Baby we would all play together.

We drew numbers for teams and all is well as long as we let PhilBillPaul win.

We ended the evening with Apples to Apples.

The Grunter’s partner did not help him win.

Not all fun and games

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Wizzy’s most vivid memory of Christmas 2010. Everything at our house is rarely sunshine and roses. The blog highlights…the highlights.

I asked for a little help from the big kids cleaning up the downstairs after some relaxing, lazy days. After a bunch of back talk and complaining and moaning, I took matters into my hands and started to unwind the vacuum cord.

Wizzy, ever the peacemaker, tried to get me to stop and we started a “friendly” tug-o-war with the vacuum cord. (See we like games even when we are fighting.)

After a minute or so, I might have said something like this,

“If you don’t let go of this cord right now, I’m going to whip you with it…”

Her most vivid part of that memory was the last part of my sentence.

“…until you bleed.”

She has repeatedly imitated me saying this in yet another shining moment of motherhood.

I think I’ve told you before I’m not qualified to be a mother. Especially not to sassy mouthed 19 year-olds.

Back to the games

The night before the darling twins went back to college PhilBillPaul played Monopoly with them and apparently he took no prisoners and whipped them both.

But not until they bled.

Do you still play board games at your house?