Holiday Stories, Part 1

On the Friday after Christmas, our family gathered at my Aunt Kathy's house to celebrate together and exchange gifts. My aunt makes this awesome rolladin dinner- thin sliced roast beef stuffed with pickles and slow roasted- and we all scarfed it down. She is an inspirational kind of cook: everything she makes tastes so good and she's always trying out new things. Anyway, my cousin Eric and his family were there as well as his in-laws and my parents. I gave the Famous Family Cookbook to three of the women there and that was lots of fun. We also opened gifts from my cousin Len, who is in the Air Force and doing a 5 month stint in the United Arab Emirates. He sent Michaela a beautiful black and gold purse and Jenna got a stuffed camel. Jenna doesn't say the letter c so she calls it "my hamel." She loved it and hugged it (see above picture) and overall it was a big hit.

Later in the evening, Dan was playing with the hamel and noticed that there was a velcroed shut slit in it's belly. He opened it up and found a spot to put in some batteries. Aunt Kathy got out a few double A's and we fired it up. Out from the hamel came very loud, very Middle-Eastern sounding upbeat music with the voices of little kids chanting who knows what along with the music. Jenna's little face screwed up and she said, "I don't want the batteries in! Tate dem out!" It was wild. And rather catchy... I hummed the music to myself the rest of the night.

In keeping with the international theme, Dan's dad is over visiting today and we are heading out to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. The girls love sushi and we're going to sit at a Hibachi table and have them cook the food in front of us. I think the girls will totally groove on it.

PS- I signed Michaela up for gymnastics class... she starts Tuesday!