The 12 Days of Christmas

Yes, yes, I know: the 12 days of Christmas actually are those extending from Christmas Day to Epiphany. (You didn't know that? Well, then, you ought to read this. You might like to read this for further details about the familiar Christmas song "The 12 Days of Christmas." This is a clever look at that song using math [Pascal's triangle]. And how much would it cost to give your true love all the gifts from the song? Check out this and this.)

Anyway, back to this post: It feels as though we've had 12 days of Christmas around here for all the Christmas celebrations we've been attending (and all the gifts we've been reaping--though nary a partridge nor a pear tree in sight). On Friday we drove to Mandan, ND to celebrate Christmas with Susan's family, minus her sister, Cassie, and Cassie's husband, Nick, who recently moved together to Raleigh, NC. Susan's dad, Roger, was in Raleigh with them for Christmas and in Mandan Friday with us. Susan's brother, Jerrett, his wife, Cheryl, and Cheryl's son, Arron, live in Mandan and hosted us all at their lovely home.

We had delicious appetizers, including some tasty cheese-stuffed jalapeno peppers made by Roger and his friend JoAnn and some bacon-wrapped pheasant bites. We also had vermicelli soup and venison French dips for the main course. We opened gifts (waaay too much for the girls again from their non-parental relatives, a trend that doesn't seem to wane from year to year) and then had birthday cake. For Suzanna's birthday Cheryl made better-than-sex cake (chocolate, caramel, toffee, whipped cream--delicious), although we didn't call it that aloud!

We also watched a few minutes of a movie that JoAnn had bought (from a dollar bin in a video store) and found appalling . . . so appalling that she wanted to share the torture with us! It's called Ole and Lena, and it happens to feature many actors whom Susan and I know and have worked with. It was made by a man for whom I once acted in a commercial that he shot. JoAnn was turned off by the mockery it makes of North Dakotans, portraying them as simple and backwards using the most offensive Scandinavian stereotypes. Ill thoughts were expressed about the quality of the acting and production techniques before we had to turn it off for fear of losing brain cells. (It's unfortunate because I've seen all those involved in Ole and Lena do much better work in other projects.)

Yesterday morning, Jerrett and Cheryl started us off with sausage, hash browns, chocolate chip pancakes, coffee, and juice. And then we were off. After weeks and weeks of no snow in Dickinson, we found ourselves buried under inches and inches of the stuff in Mandan, gently but relentlessly falling all night and all day. Pretty to look at but a pain to drive through, especially up and down the unplowed hills of metropolitan Bismarck/Mandan.

But drive through it we did. It was Suzanna's birthday yesterday; she's now nine years old! She wanted to use a Barnes & Noble gift certificate that she received as a gift and to eat her birthday lunch at Red Lobster, neither of which we have in Dickinson. So we spent the morning and early afternoon in Bismarck, ND, exchanging Christmas gifts (clothes in the wrong sizes) at Target, buying a book (Eragon) and bookmark at Barnes & Noble, buying New Year's Eve meal ingredients at Sam's Club, and dining at Red Lobster. The drive home was treacherous, but the roads got increasingly better the entire way home.

Last night Suzanna hosted a sleep-over for three friends. She requested canned raviolli for supper and carrot cake for her birthday cake, and she got both. She opened birthday gifts, and she and her friends and her sisters played games, and we all watched the movie Hoodwinked, the DVD of which our daughters received for Christmas. The girls kept themselves awake long after being tucked in for the night, coming upstairs a couple times to get me to reassure them of the absence of monsters in the basement, etc. I think they fell asleep finally around 1:30 A.M.! This morning I drove them all home, and then we had a family shovel-thon here with everybody helping to clean off the driveway of the snow that fell last night. The girls are still outside playing in the snow. We didn't have any snow for the first day(s) of Christmas, but maybe we'll have it for remainder of the 12 days . . .

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