Holiday Cheer

Happy holidays, friends and families and cyber-stalkers! I am feeling a little relaxed because today is the first official day of Winter Break! Actually where I live in the Midwest, they just call it Christmas Break. They also have Christmas trees in the public schools and show the old VH1 video of David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing “Little Drummer Boy” to the entire school:

But what the hell, it’s not hard to get into the holiday spirit and since I celebrate pretty much all the holidays, who I am to get offended? Plus, David Bowie?! Awesome!

Tonight will be my block’s first annual progressive dinner party, otherwise known as The 12 Drinks of Christmas (don’t worry, Ma, they’re non-alcoholic of course). We start off with five families trekking out in the snow and the cold and go to one house in our ‘hood, have a drink or two, nosh on some ridiculously caloric appetizer while the 13+ kids reap havoc in the freshly cleaned home and then, after 30 minutes have passed, we get all our gear back on (that should take about 10 minutes by itself) and go to the next unsuspecting house. Our house is number four so the kids should be either completely exhausted or completely wacked from sugar by the time they get there.

We’re lucky that we moved to a block with 16 or so kids and most of their parents are fun and like-minded enough to hang out with us San Francisco ex-pats. We even have another family on our block who also hail from San Francisco so we're extra lucky. Tonight will be a good opportunity to further bond with the neighbors.

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Epilogue:

The 12 Drinks of Christmas have come and gone. Many sweet red and green drinks were consumed; songs were danced to, including "The Teaches of Peaches" when the kids were far away, and general good times were had. Unfortunately keeping the kids up until almost midnight resulted in some cranky children for the past two days, plus someone in this house (not me, I swear) puked, but 'tis the season for celebrating!