Both of these things are true. But i did not come up with this myself. I have Kris Jenner/Kardashian to thank.
I begin this blog in this way because the punchline is stuck in my head.
Little Christmas 2012.
We began the night with a Grammie special toast (for those who don't know, Grammie's drink was always a Screwdriver) but with the absence of orange juice, Cat improvised with orange soda...No matter how many times the story gets told, it never gets old, we then talk about how we were never allowed to drink Grammie's juice as kids and the one time Grammie put her screwdriver in a sippie cup and my older brother Tommy had his first run in with alcohol at like the age of 1.
We all watched Kris Jenner/Kardashian's "I Love My Friends" music video together and with no surprise it was the song of the night, filling in whatever words fit appropriately to the current situation. (if you have not seen it, youtube it so you may understand). My favorite subbed line was "I LOVE BAKED CLAMS."
Michelle received "Like" and "Dislike" stamps from Cat, honoring Michelle's ability to like virtually everything on facebook, commencing everyone being stamped at least once, if not more than once on whatever skin may have been showing (back of heads, chests, hands and wrists) even my mom stamped our 90 year old aunt with it twice.
A three round game of Catch Phrase that involved 8 - 9 family members per team where we learned married couples and twins can give each other 1 word clues and an answer can be produced, all of our moms need reading glasses to play games with us now and we also learned that Trish when it was her turn, in almost a turrets fashion, could not function through without elbowing Dena and Michelle while giving her clues.
The family member roasted the most was Aunt Cathy and the most surprising roaster was Regina. After eating two bowls of only tortellini and sitting quietly at the corner of the table, Regina got up and did an entire stand-up routine on Aunt Cathy's bizarre way of functioning with her back/leg pain which included an array of outlandish grunts, body twitching and how Aunt Cathy talks to herself about it, which we all seemed to realize Aunt Cathy was the new Grammie but the difference, as Regina pointed out is "Mommy was in pain, Grammie was just weird" which resulted in tears of rolling laughter and i'm sure somewhere in heaven Grammie was doing the same.
The most disappointing part of the night was that Regina was the only person in the house that had never seen the classic movie, A League of Their Own, but Joseph Gerard knew more about the movie than anyone...i'm still concerned about this. ;)
Weaved generously in between the toast, dinner, presents, Catch Phrase, "I Love My Friends" outbursts, Aunt Cathy grunts, "Like" stamps and reciting A League of Their Own, there was incessant reenactments and quoting of the spin class which Cat and Michelle took together on Thursday night, including Cat's commentary and raving about the instructor.
This kind of Christmas is nothing new - this is just it in all its amazing-ness - and i feel like as we get older it gets better and better. The kids took over the dining room table since we've grown with our husbands/wives/significant others too big, our parents were at the "kid table" in the kitchen. Making sure everyone was seated, we were sure to say our prayer together before we ate dinner, just like our parents taught us. in the echos of our laughter and flicker of the candlelight you can still hear our kid voices in every corner of the house from Christmases past...and Auntie Donna shouting when she's realizes after Auntie Cathy left that she stole the camel from her Nativity scene, AGAIN.
