How Was Your Christmas?

[Buddy]

I knew it was a sex position but here I was hoping that the dirty jokes wouldn't show up in the Christmas thread haha.

[Tank]

I knew it was a sex position but here I was hoping that the dirty jokes wouldn't show up in the Christmas thread haha.

No chance 

[Bluenose]

The Blue xmas proceeded as normal at my sisters place. We share the costs with the main participants contributing to the meal. My sister provides the turkey and the veges, and I get the sparkling red wine, this year I got a rather tasty sparkling shiraz/durif, plus i always buy a 2.5 kg box of jumbo sized cherries. Mum does the studying for the turkey gets the duck fat for the roast spuds and brings chocolates (yum).  This year's "ring-ins" brought some beautiful dips served in whole scooped out loaves of bread - delish!

Because it was a declared total fire ban day we couldn't cook the bird in the webber as planned so we did it in the oven and took it out early, wrapped it in foil and let it rest while we roasted the veges. The turkey turned out absolutely tender, juicy and succulent!  Well be doing it this way in future.

All in all we had a great day. There were 15 people for lunch, we had a blast.

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Edit: fixed predictive text errors

[Icarus]

The nearby family came to their senses for this years holiday. The women decided: to hell with all that work and expense for the traditional fare of stuffed turkey, candied yams, and all those casseroles, condiments, and pies, and other goodies.  They decided that we'd have soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with a suitable amount of beer.  That worked out brilliantly, a good time was had by all, our stomachs were satisfied, our thirst quenched, and none of us bothered to thank Jesus or have a lot of dishes to wash. ............ Halleleulia!!!

[Guardian85]

I knew it was a sex position but here I was hoping that the dirty jokes wouldn't show up in the Christmas thread haha.

Yeah, right! 

[Sandra Craft]

Mine was awful, just awful. It's safe to say that I'm never going to my maternal grandparent's house for Christmas again. 

Sorry about all that xSPx, esp. the mosquitos.  Fundamentalist relatives I can tune out, but not mosquitos.

Mine was quiet, but very nice.  Teresa's daughter Olivia turned up for a surprise visit and they came over to my place for Xmas eve dinner (T cooked, so nobody got food poisoning): ham, mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts.  I've been eating left-over ham for days.

Everybody gave me books, so I was happy.  Even my brother gave me a book.  At some point I can't remember I sent him a sketch book (inscription in front to remind me), and he sent it back filled up.  Mostly he does rather abstract stuff -- weird looking to me because I'm a philistine.  This sort of image turns up frequently:



This sketchbook, however, had a lot of very realistic drawings in it as well.  My favorites:











If I can get good photocopies made, I'm going to frame a few of them.  The bear, definitely.

[Tank]

Those sketches are exceptionally good.

[Sandra Craft]

Those sketches are exceptionally good.

I've always thought so, but then, he's my brother.

[Essie Mae]

Very creative present.

In deciding to make things easy (8 of us), I bought prepared carrots and parsnips but they failed to cook in the allotted time, and by the time we had put them in the microwave to cook, having then to separate out the parsnips from the carrots because they cooked first, it was twice the work and the two o'clock serving time became 3.30. Fortunately everyone was well oiled with alcohol by then and no-one seemed to mind. When it's my turn again in two years' time, I'll do it all from scratch as usual. We had a lovely time though.

[Sandra Craft]

In deciding to make things easy (8 of us), I bought prepared carrots and parsnips but they failed to cook in the allotted time, and by the time we had put them in the microwave to cook, having then to separate out the parsnips from the carrots because they cooked first, it was twice the work and the two o'clock serving time became 3.30.

I have never known that not to happen at a holiday dinner -- "we'll eat at 2" becomes sit down at 5.  Tho in my experience because somebody seriously underestimated the cooking time on the turkey.  In any case, that's what alcohol and appetizers are for!

[Firebird]

Those sketches are quite good!
Neither the wife or I celebrate  and neither of our families is nearby, and it was in the 70s ( 20s if you're using centigrade) which is unheard of in Boston. So I lay in the backyard reading all afternoon, we grilled a bunch of food, and binge watched Jessica Jones and Dr. Who. It was awesome.
It dropped below freezing and snowed since then, of course.