Christmas festivity began at work yesterday morning with all of my immediate coworkers and I bringing in gifts for an exchange. We also had our annual Christmas Eve brunch, provided by the department.

Very little work got done throughout the morning, and then we finally received the word that we could leave at 1:00. Apparently this happens every year on Christmas Eve, although no one ever knows exactly the time we will be allowed to go. I had the whole day off last year, because I took a vacation day for my birthday.

My wife, son and I were supposed to meet The Scotsman and his fiancee for lunch after I got off work, but his furnace went out the night before so he was stuck at his house until repairmen came out to fix it. So lunch turned into an early supper at Uno's Pizzeria.

Afterwards we went over to my parent's house to retrieve a space heater for Scots to keep warm with, since his furnace was unable to be repaired that night. Then we went home, and spent Christmas Eve proper reading the Biblical Christmas story to our son before bedtime, and then watching the movie, "A Christmas Story" after he went to bed. First time I'd ever seen it all the way through, too.

This morning I awoke early to go shovel about three inches of snow off the driveway and sidewalk! White Christmas, w00t! Afterwards, we had a hot breakfast, then opened our gifts for each other. Then we packed up and headed over to my parent's house for the rest of the day.

The first thing we did there was help my dad re-shovel his driveway and walk. My son has a little toddler's shovel, so he came out and "helped." He helped me do ours earlier too.

My grandmother, two uncles and an aunt, and two cousins came over later for Christmas dinner at three. My mom always puts on a HUGE spread, including what the rest of the family brings. The menu included turkey, honey-baked ham, mashed potaters, cornbread-stuff, Ohio casserole, sweet potaters, two kinds of jello salad, green olives & pickles, stuffing, and three kinds of pie along with cookies and shortbread for dessert.

After dinner my family always has a white elephant gift game. This year I got to keep the first thing I opened, a Clifford the Big Red Dog Bobblehead keychain for my collection. After that, the Boston Celtics vs. Whoever-was-beating-the-crap-outta-them basketball game got turned on, and several of us went to the dining room to play Blurt!, the new board game my dad received. I won, w00t!

Then we came home, brought all our new stuff inside the house, put our son to bed, and got ready for tomorrow.

Now I should be going to bed, but gotta finish catching up here first!

Gri"deck the hall with bows of horry, fa-ra-ra-ra-raaa, ra-ra-ra-ra!"shny