This shall be the Christmas Eve post. I woke up early, popped It's A Wonderful Life into the VCR, and decorated the tree until the Steeler game, where the dream finally died. I'm realizing that I can't quite remember the order of things as it was a crazy weekend. My parents brought my brother and sister home from the airport. There was much rejoicing. My sister made cookies in Arizona so we got thimble cookies after all (more rejoicing).

Christmas Eve means dinner at my grandmother's on the South Side. I came in through the front door, dumped a couple bags of presents by the tree, and proceeded to snag a prime seat in the dining room where I stayed for most of the night. There was a pretty good sing-a-long and the best food in the world (pirogies, stuffed cabbage, pickled herring, and gummy bears).

We've done an adult grab bag the last few years at my grandmother's. We had a pretty good one this year. All the kids were banished from the dining room and the grab bag presents were stacked on a table. I believe there were 27 people in the grab bag and I picked number 8 (my brother was number 9, incidentally). When it was my turn I opened a box and got a Steelers blanket. My brother stole the t-shirt I made from my cousin's baby daddy. At some point someone stole the blanket from me and I selected the plain, brown paper bag and got a classy pitcher (thanks for not stealing it from me, grandma!). My brother's grab bag experience was more exciting. My aunt Donna stole the shirt from him and he went through a number of presents, including a gift certificate to the Olive Garden, before ending up with a set of candles. In one of the cutest moments of the night, he was soliciting advice on which package he should select from a bunch of our cousins who were standing on the stairs. They were all hanging over the railing and pointing. That's the picture that I'm the most sorry I missed.

The grab bag was only marred by a couple fits of shouting. We sort of made of the rules as we went but the young people were able to force the game to be played the way they thought was right. It got a little heated at the end. Some people take the grab bag very seriously. I can't wait until next year.

After that we returned home, vacuumed, hung up the stockings, and threw our presents under the tree. My brother and I stayed up until 2:00 watching a Wallflower's concert on PBS. I was pretty tired at this point but I think Santa Claus arrived and put more presents under the tree, but this is moving into Christmas morning and that's another post.