'Twas the Night Before Christmas

Merry Christmas Eve, America.

Arguably one of my favorite days of the year, Christmas Eve in the Hough house has, over the years, taken on the mantle of being the pinnacle of the Holiday Season.  Maybe not for the kids, of course, since opening gifts as a kid is a pretty tough act to beat.   

Prepping the turkey for the oven, around 9am.

Anyway, this year, once again, we hosted Kris' Laginess branch of the family - sans gift exchanging - and ran through a laundry-list of usual Christmas Eve requirements.  Cooking a turkey, opening some Christmas Eve gifts, watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation while putting out all the presents after the girls went to bed, etc.  This year did see a few previous traditions fall by the wayside, since the girls are getting older - namely putting out cookies for Santa and reading The Night Before Christmas.  It was only a matter of time before the kids outgrew those ones.

So yeah - I'll leave you now with a large assortment of pictures and videos to browse through, documenting the Houghs' 2021 Christmas Eve.  

Enjoy. . . 

We woke up to a White Christmas Eve, which was pretty cool. . . too bad it melted throughout the day, leaving us once again without a White Christmas.

Once the turkey was in the oven, we set the girls to work picking up the house in order to prepare for company that would be rolling in around lunchtime.  In the meantime, Kris and I drove some furniture up to Clare for Kris' mom, and to also pick her up to bring back with us.

Victoria - Kris' cousin Crystal's oldest kid - wouldn't be able to make it out this year, as she had just given birth to a boy the previous evening.  We deemed this excuse valid.

Around lunchtime, the turkey was finally done - turned out really good this year (thank God.)  I went with the Michigander recipe, which is always a homerun.

This process usually takes a bit, but this year we ended up freezing a bunch of it for future use, as well as putting some aside for use in a soup I was planning on doing in a couple days.

Assembling some gingerbread houses with Grandma Jordan.

These dogs have zero shame.

Reading manga on her chromebook instead of hanging around family.  We've hit those years.

I was disappointed I couldn't get my hands on Southern Tier's 2XMas (my favorite Holiday beer) or any of their other seasonal imperial stouts this year - frickin' Covid has disrupted the beer industry too, surprise surprise - but I did find this imperial ale that was just as festive (and delicious.)

Coaxed back into the dining room to socialize with family.

Taking a card break in the Study

(Not sure what they're looking at here. . .)

We ran out of room for our Christmas cards this year, so we couldn't put them all up.   Next year we're going to have to come up with a better solution, for sure.

Way too much food, as usual.

Yes, colored vinyl makes it sound better.  Shut up.

Grandkids and granddogs.

Got this texted to me by my old college roommate (and Virgil Q bandmate), Zack Learman.  Good to see his sense of humor hasn't changed in the last 20 years. . .

Abby's gingerbread house.

Drawing.  This girl is always drawing.

Another masterpiece from Zack.  That may be the most disgusting pizza I've ever seen. . . even without the dog.

Twinsies.  Marcy and Mickey.

Hens, clucking.

Alayna and Kyan (Crystal's youngest.)

Watching Kyan play videogames in the living room (he brought along his XBox so he had something to do - smart move.)

Kris' family always wants a portrait done whenever they're together, so I had to test out the lighting and timer settings on my SLR in the Study. 

Mickey, her husband Dennis, Marcy, Alayna, Kyan, Abby, Kris, and a handsome photographer.

These two gingerbread houses completely sum up the personalities of my two children.  One does the bare minimum but handles it was competence, while the other goes 110% with effort but creates a hot mess in the process.

Around dinner time (not that we had an official sit-down meal or anything, folks just grazed all afternoon), the rest of the Laginess clan departed and we let the girls open their Christmas Eve presents. . .

Pajamas, as usual.

Alayna's shirt was some chick from an anime she watches (Kris didn't realize it at the time, she just grabbed it because it had Japanese writing on it.)

Kris grabbed me some pajamas, too.

Can't go wrong with The Simpsons, folks.

Attempting to get a sibling pic in front of the Christmas Tree (you can tell Alayna is a big fan of physical contact with her sister.)

Pajama pic, featuring Dad.

We decided after gifts to attempt a family picture, something we've done the last seven or eight Christmas Eves.  Abby photobombed the SLR while I was setting up the timer.

Posing with egg nog.

(This one's pretty accurate.)

The girls went to be around 9pm, but didn't fall asleep for hours afterwards due to the anticipation for the coming morning (no shocker, there.)  Still, they're pretty good about staying in their rooms until 6am Christmas morning, so Kris and I threw in this celebrated Holiday classic and started bringing up all the presents to place out under the tree.

Stuffing stockings.

Watson, mid-leap, moves in to check out the stockings.

An hour or so later, finished with setting out gifts, arranging them in order of how we wanted the girls to tear through them, and placing bows on everything.

Hallelujah. 

Time for a Merry Irishman. . .

And that, dear readers, is the end to this year's Christmas Eve in the Hough house.

All systems go for tomorrow morning.  Six hours and counting. . .

- Brian