A holiday photo retrospective

Some people might say that the best present of all is the chance to be at home during the holidays when your little sister gets engaged.

But those people don’t have green glow-in-the-dark dinosaur footie pajamas. Thank you, Kristin, I will be single forever.

Dad got a mystery board game that Ryan swears isn’t a Clue knock-off, but we’re unconvinced.

Mom got a drum set (because there’s nothing better than a five-foot tall, 60-year old asian lady rocking out on drums), but she’s the only person who’s not playing it yet. But we know she loves it because she told all her friends that thanks to her crazy family, she’s got to go find herself a percussion teacher.

 

Ryan loves his hideous alligator. (“Holy Toledo!” says Dad.)

The sis and I do love our fruit. Her forehead’s not really this big in real life.

Pie for Christmas Eve at our house. We had sixteen people over, the biggest party my parents have thrown in… well, ever. Apparently they’ve known about the engagement for three weeks, making me the only person in the world who was out of the loop.

 

We’ve had an unused crepe maker in our basement for years, the quintessential example of the junk in our house that we don’t need. What with all the moving, the crepe maker finally saw the light of day, so we used it for the first time ever. Turns out it doesn’t really work, unless you like the style of crepes with huge gaping holes in them.

 

Christmas dinner was spent meeting Ryan’s family for the first time. Long story short, everyone loves everyone else. Also, they have a pool table.

Dad and Grandma get along really well.

My last day in town was spent with my sister. For her birthday, I promised her a field trip. We started with Matchbox’s mini-hamburgers. Nine, of course.

Followed by the Boy Scout Memorial. It’s a monstrosity, don’t miss it.

By happy coincidence, the Boy Scout Memorial is right by the White House Christmas tree. Also by happy coincidence, the White House Christmas tree is really, really tacky.

Vegan chocolate cake from Sticky Fingers Bakery, the finest purveyor of vegan baked goods in the Washington metropolitan area. It wasn’t bad, but we would have appreciated it more had we been vegan.

We finished off the evening with a second visit to A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant and a family dinner at a Salvadoran restaurant. Dinner was good, but the pageant was better. Kristin I had tried to go to the pageant once before, but thanks to a wrong address on the webpage, we missed the first half. The second half was stellar enough that we had to return for a full viewing. It’s tough to capture the experience of having the story of Scientology explained to you by a cast of singing children. Just go see it yourself.

On a side note, maybe it’s unfair to single out Scientology to make fun of. After all, what with enormous arks and multi-armed elephant goddesses and so forth, mainstream religions have plenty of wacky ideas of their own.

On the other hand – an alien lord Xenu planting hydrogen bombs in volcanoes and blowing parasitic alien spirits throughout the universe? Really, that’s pretty funny.