Broadbent Christmas 2004

 

Lots of festivities! Lots of fun! Lots of anatomically correct snowpersons!

 

This year we are not drawing names for gifts, partly because no one can remember all the names of the spouses and/or assorted paramours, so gifts are to be given entirely at the givers discretion. This means that now is the time to put away the schemes and take out the doilies and handshakes!

Let me take this opportunity to personally tell every family member, particularly the more solvent family members, just how much I love and respect you. (please see desired gift list in your email.)

 

 

Holiday Season Events:

Card party—tentatively scheduled for December 19th or 20th, 2004. I will supply all paper, buttons, trim, ribbon, paints, glitter. You can bring assorted paper and trim and fancy scissors and ideas if you want. We will have snacks and holiday music and fascinating gossip as well. A few select neat-o friends and cousins are coming.  Last year was very fun, and this year will be great too, I know it. How many times can we stand to hear ‘Go Tell it on the Mountain’ played with banjos? On this day we will find out!

 

Gingerbread Party—The schedule is tentative for this party. Rachel gets here late this year, and she makes the best gingerbread by far. Sometime in the week preceding Christmas Eve. But we will have fresh gingerbread and tons of pretty white frosting and a lot of bright candy! Remember, whoever leaves the long table for ANY reason, even to urinate, during this party leaves their gingerbread house/construct open to swift free-style decoration by all other participants. So bring a catheter and a mason jar, if you want your gingerbread house to stay pretty. Alan—I’m talking to you. You never seem to learn.

 

Snowman Party and Snowmobile Race—If there is snow. If there is not snow, alternative event is a tequila fueled drag race on West Mountain. We will still be on snowmobiles, if we have snowmobiles that have not exploded and/or been stolen, because why waste a tanked up snowmobile? Just bring sunscreen instead of mittens.

As for the alternative to a snowman party, I say that painting someone white and gluing a carrot to them could be just as fun, if not even funner than building an actual snowman from snow. I nominate Woody, because he is nice and tall and therefore affords a lot of space for decorative inventiveness.

(Also, he’s such a patient, good natured fellow.)

 

 

Christmas Eve Scheduled Events:

 

   Bring a talent for the talent show and your favorite candy for the stockings, enough for ALL the stockings—that was a good job last year, everyone had at least something they liked, and no one was angered by ‘Santa’s’ idiotic and hasty last minute choice of carob raisins and a bunch of grubby gumdrops from the bottom of some ancient Easter basket. (Mom—We all know you are ‘Santa.’ So I’m talking to you.)

Also, everyone bring a big box of your favorite cereal to munch on when you get hungry. If we do this Christmas Day will go smoothly, and not so much resemble the Visigoths sacking Rome. I mean, jeeze, Dave! Take that tablecloth out of your mouth! Someone else already sucked the vitamins out of it.

Summary of what to bring:

Talent for talent Show

Candy for all the stockings, about 15.

Favorite box of cereal

Possibly a food dish for Christmas Eve Dinner. Someone will contact you as needed.

 

Christmas Eve Dinner—Yum! Around 5 to 6 p.m. We will eat like Kings! Like Kings raised in a barn, that is.

Crossword puzzles—Rachel and I are coming up with some good ones, based on family members. Winner gets a prize. Brush up on all relevant trivia, such as: who accidentally set themselves on fire most this decade? That’s such an easy one! (Big Al.) Who can eat the most jerky while drunk in the blazing hot desert and their vehicle has broken down? That’s a hard one!

Christmas carols—I’m leaning towards ‘Holly Jolly Christmas.’ and ‘Oh Tannenbaum’ to begin with. Lyrics will be provided. Some of the more sinful singers will become maudlin and weepy as carols are sung. I like that part.

Talent Show—You will all be pleased by my interpretive dance this year! And I hear Julie’s got an exhibit planned that will truly amaze all. I hesitate to imagine what it will be.

Traditional Wassail Guzzling—that’s good stuff. No swimming hamsters or raisins in it, this year. Because I hate raisins.

Hearing the Animals Speak at Midnight—I’m fed up with Murphy and Ed and Henry and Pod pretending they can’t speak on Christmas Eve. This year they will speak, or else.

 

The Lucky Christmas Log! Who will win it this year? Oh, who ever will win the lucky Christmas log? The log of great fortune and aggrandizement?

Time alone will tell! Oh, and I guess Gayle will tell as well—I can’t keep a secret for ten little seconds,  we all know that.

 

 

 

 

Rachel telling mom and the boys an amusing anecdote last year, Christmas 2003.

 

Gingerbread party 2003. Look at all those bright candies! That’s my house in front center. It was very pretty and tasty, I recall.

And on the left is that Jesus participating!? Wow!! What an amazing holiday season!!

Oh, no, wait—it’s just Daryl. 

 Julie and Pace making gingerbread houses 2003. I believe Pace consumed the equivalent to his own body weight in gumdrops and m&m’s.