Post Christmas Tale

Are the holidays over yet?? Nope, not by a long shot in the Sutton household! Not even sure where to start regarding the weekend. There was family, food, friends. People you wanted to see...people you could do without seeing. Lots of gifts were received (including a new computer!) and given (I'm much better at giving gifts than receiving them). Food you could eat all day and food that does nothing but expand your waistline...and boy did it expand! Actually, as of Monday morning I was actually down a pound or two from where I was going into the weekend, so that was a nice surprise. On Monday night though, Naperville Greg and Kleveland Kim came over and we had cheese, sausage, crackers and then ordered Mexican food. Ugh. The evening was great, don't get me wrong, we hung out at home and talked for like four hours. We haven't seen them since the wedding (if you remember Greg played the guitar while I sang at the reception).

After being in Joliet for a night and Naperville for a day, we arrived at home late on Christmas Day (we left at halftime during the Bears game). Our paper was still on the doorstep and an envelope was stuck in our door. Inside the envelope was a gift card for a swanky restaurant to which I've never gone despite living in the neighborhood for 20 years. How swanky is this place? Well, inside the envelope was a $100 gift card and that didn't even cover dinner! We each had the lowest priced glass of wine (which was still tasty) an appetizer, an entree and we shared a side. The total for the two of us with taxes and tip? A paltry $160!!! Unbelievable. Forget about going there ESDNM. It was good, but I'm fairly sure I won't be darkening their doorstep again. Oh, the restaurant name is Boka.

And why did the neighbors leave us a $100 gift card? Well, they were heading out of town for the holidays and the card was expiring at the end of the year, so they gave it to us. Earlier in the year we had gone to an expensive restaurant with them called Gejas for fondue. I had a gift card for $100 and thought the four of us could eat for that, but I was sadly mistaken. Anyway, our food was good at Boka, but it's just crazy ass expensive.

Christmas was good with midnight mass at LL's family church this year (last year we came home on Christmas eve and went to my church). LL's father sings in the choir, so we enjoy going, plus they have a bell.....what...gaggle? No, not gaggle. A bell team? A group of ringers? I don't know what they call themselves, but people who play bells. Pretty cool.

Of the many gifts we gave this year, probably the most interesting (though LL may disagree) was a 6 month subscription to Ancestry.com that we got for my parents (mainly my dad, who turned 75 on Friday). It was the international edition of Ancestry.com too, so he wasn't limited to researching just in the U.S. Pretty cool and I'm glad I have my dad around to buy gifts for, but man it gets tougher and tougher every year!! For his birthday, we took my parents out to Rosebud in Naperville which they had never been to, but really enjoyed.

So if you're keeping track, that was: party at Ricardo's on Thursday, dinner with parents on Friday, dinner with LL's parents and family on Christmas eve, dinner with my family on Christmas day, Greg and Kim over on Monday and the very swank Boka tonight. Wow....that's a lot...even for me!