Image by pellis via Flickr

We ended up with a holiday worthy of 'A Christmas Story'.

Christmas Eve, I'm expected my husband's family to show up, as they have every year for the last 5, with all the food - my mother in law cooks every thing, and I typically make a side dish or two.

Around 6pm, i ask my husband who all is coming - and he casually replies 'Oh, didn't I tell you? Everyone is going over to my aunt's for Xmas eve, because she's sick and can't get out' .

For some reason, it had never been mentioned, although I'd been asking for 3 weeks what the plans were for Xmas eve.

Well, we had company in the house, backpackers from Venezuela and Ecuador, that we had invited to stay for Xmas with us instead of going on to Bolivia on the 23rd as they'd planned, so it would have been bad form for us to slide off to someone else's house. So we rushed off to Wong and got a pre-cooked turkey part, a couple boxes of salads and cookies, and what not.

Unbeknownst to me, the Venezuelan had also gone off shopping, and came home with enough food to feed a small army - lechon, more salads, more what not.

I started cooking scalloped potatoes (I had to have one favorite side dish of my own), and at about 10 pm (about the time I'm inviting people over - sadly, no one showed :() my husband says, 'I'll be back in a few minutes, I'm going to run to my aunt's house and say Merry Xmas to everyone - no more than half an hour. I looked at him and said... 'Do NOT leave me all alone on Xmas eve.'

At 10 minutes to midnight (!!!) I'm calling my husband on the cellphone - 'Where the heck are you?? it's almost time to eat?? He walked in at midnight, calmly mentioning 'I'm not really hungry, I already ate over there'.

I punched him in the arm. :oops:

The guests had gotten tired and gone to bed, but the fireworks woke them up.

Well, the fireworks and our dogs, who went absolutely berserk when the fireworks started up.

So - the food turned out being delicious, and we all ate until we were stuffed, then talked for a while, drank a bunch of wine, and finally fell into bed around 3am.

Hope your Christmas was as exciting as mine!!