'Tis the Season To Be Jolly

So although I was only home for 6 days for the Christmas holidays, I had a good time. Of course, lots of family and friends with more memories and more laughter and smiles - for the most part. This was the first Christmas without Tata being around physically, but spiritually, I think I felt him around - especially at Nana's house. I think he's watching over all of us, making sure that the New Year treats us more decently.

The agenda throughout the Christmas week was pretty tentative except for Nana and Grammy's house on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. My family, the Hernandez family and Sia met up at Kaledoscope to see Marley & Me on Christmas Day. Oh Jesus. We were ALL balling our eyes out. It was certainly a great movie, but man oh man, I couldn't wait to get home to Chester for a snuggle sesh. And no kidding, we walked out of the theater with teary eyes and red, swollen faces and couldn't stop the tears from flowin' til perhaps a few minutes of driving away in the car. Lyss and I got mad at Mom and Dad on the way home because they kept talking about the movie and it kept making us cry. It was pretty annoying because they would bring up our Cheddar Pants (Chester - just in case you didn't know that) and Lyss would start crying and then I would start crying because she was crying. It was awful. Total tear fest of 2008.

Aside from the weeping, the family was great as always. We played some games on Christmas, thanks to Mom and Dad's creative brilliance. As the family knows, Dad burned cd's of everyone's birthday songs. Mom, being a "Johnny Angel", created a few games revolving around the birthday songs. I think everyone enjoyed them. At the end of the games, we concluded that Aunt Michele was a big winner and Uncle George - not so much. Mikey and Nicky dominated the charts with their songs at 14 weeks at number one each - Macarena and Candle in the Wind - while Lyss and I were sore losers on the charts with one week on the chart each - Higher Love and Good Thing. Not gonna lie, I think my birthday song is pretty baller. I love it. I must say that Ari's song - Black Cat - should have been my song. I mean, we all know who the real Janet protege is here... ahem.

So overall highlights of my holiday week:

- amazing family
- birthday songs
- Jake and JJ at breakfast and spectrum
- Tuna (Ashley)
- CSG inc.
- Chester
- the weather
- Uncle Larry passed out on Grammy's sofa with beer in hand (as a real man should pass out)


Anyway, here are some pics from the holidays at home. I hope everyone has as fun of a time as I did.