How to celebrate Maxmas

So this is how it goes. Santa comes, we wake up and open presents, stockings first and then after everything is open and has been presented to everyone else and photographed, there is a half hour of silence in which everyone sets to scratching lottery tickets.

When I was little I remember just having to scratch everything and see if the numbers matched. It was easy and it only took a couple minutes. Nowadays they make you work for your winnings or nonwinnings. No doubt they pay someone way too much to put together complicated puzzles that require excessive concentration and precision scratching in order to arrive at the realization that you are very close to winning something decent but not quite there.

Anyways, I win at lottery ticket scratching today. $32 on two tickets! I'm just chock full of awesome.

Then, because there's nothing to do on December 25, everyone runs out to watch a movie. Today someone decided that it would be a good idea to see Marley and Me a story about a dog that looked and acted almost exactly like our dead dog, in which THIS IS A SPOILER! the dog dies YOU PRETTY MUCH KNEW THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN NOT VERY LONG INTO THE MOVIE ANYWAYS! when we have unresolved issues related to euthanizing the cat earlier this year, and the fact that the other two could go at any minute. We all cried a lot. A lot of people in the theatre did.

Then home for dinner. My mom's holiday specialty is turkey that reminds me of the National Lampoon Christmas.



Then afterward the cribbage tournament continues, and my seven game winning streak is finally over. Meh.

This year was a little different with the addition of Christmas crackers. Everyone had three each and silliness ensued when people got their stupid little prizes. A pencil, yay! A cell phone charm, yay! A golf abacus... um... yay! A spring on a keychain ring? WTF?