Holiday Rounds

As usual, our holiday rounds began on Christmas Eve at Jacob's aunt Christina's house. We enjoyed rice, beans, deviled eggs, dips (including Jacob's world famous 7-layer dip), cheese, crackers, meats and sweets. I even brought some seasoned crackers which were a huge hit. The food was delicious! Oh yeah, there were also tamales for the tamale eaters. While we waited for midnight to strike, we attempted to play a game of Cranium. I say "attempted" because we had to modify the rules because we quickly learned that playing with 19 people can be very challenging. At midnight we opened gifts and we finally headed home around 2:30 am. (Yes, this was well past my bedtime).

On Christmas day we planned to go to 10am mass. We knew this meant that we would need to be awake by 8am so we could be ready to leave by 9am. However, since we had gone to sleep at 3:30am, I convinced Jacob that we should sleep a little more and go to the 12pm mass instead. He agreed. We woke up around 9:30am, got ready for church (wearing wrinkle free clothes because our iron stopped working that morning), and then as we headed out the door, Jacob wanted to make sure mass was truly at 12pm and not at 12:30pm. Yes, fortunately mass was at 12pm but unfortunately, 12pm mass was in Spanish! I thought it would still be worth attending but then Jacob pointed out that we wouldn't understand anything that would be going on. So, after researching a few other church options, we realized that based on our timing, along with our wrinkle free outfits (a.k.a., jeans) we probably wouldn't have made it to another mass in time and we would have really stood out as being under-dressed.

Later that day, we went to Jacob's aunt Martha's house. Normally, we don't have enough time to eat at Martha's house because we usually only have enough time to stop by to say hello before we rush off to my mom's house but because game night at my aunt and uncle's was postponed until the next day, my mom started her dinner later this year which gave us plenty of time to grab a plate of delicious food. We had rice, beans, ham, potato salad, and Jacob even had more tamales! We even had enough time to watch Roger Mason hit a game winning 3pt shot against the Suns. Go Spurs Go!

Next we headed to my mom's house where we had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, sweet potato casserole, cranberries, rolls, fruit salad, and chocolate cheesecake. We opened gifts then my mom, my sister and my grandma teamed up against Jacob and me in a game of Mad Gab. It was a tied game and then my mom and I went head to head in the tie breaker match. Their team won with the saying "Me Tarzan, You Jane." I never would have gotten it, who speaks like that anyway?

On Friday we went to Mimi's to use my $10 off coupon for a late lunch (they're grilled cheese is exceptional but I was dying for some veggies mid-way through my sandwich; thank goodness Jacob let me eat some of his walnut and cranberry salad.)

After Mimi's we went to my aunt Rose and uncle Cesar's house for game night. We started the night by opening gifts and enjoying some munchies. We had pigs in a blanket, spinach and artichoke dip, chips, dips, veggies, cheese, crackers, and sweets. I had brought my seasoned crackers as a gift for my uncle and he (along with everyone else) really enjoyed them. Plus, Jacob even had some more tamales! I think he had a really good share of tamales this year! Then after everyone had arrived, the men vs. women showdown began. We started off by playing Partini. This was a new game for us and was great because it helped the women take the lead: 1-0. Next we played Cranium Wow. It was a head to head battle but the men came out ahead. The score was then 1:1. Sadly, we lost a few players but the tie needed to be broken. Using Pictionary as the tie breaker, the women blew the men away in landslide win! Yay! The women had finally broken the dynasty of the men and then we headed home. Side note: Jacob claims that the men only lost because they lost 40% of their team.