Holiday fun part one

Posting from the hotel in Michigan's exercise room. No, I'm not multi-tasking that effectively. I'm keeping The Husband company while he works his butt off on the treadmill. However, he's using his new Ipod (his birthday gift from me) and doesn't seem to need much company. I actually think I'm here because if two people are in here, another person is less likely to join him on the machines. So I'm here to psych people out and scare them away. Which, if you could see my hair right now, wouldn't be a stretch.

The family holiday visit is going well thus far, with the only glitch being that The Boy and Susie both have fevers again. The Boy radiated heat yesterday and I took his temperature....101.8. Susie followed suit later, at 100.7. We medicated them both and decided to carry on with our family's plan for the Best Christmas Gift Ever. Since the folks don't want gifts, my mother suggested that Lil Bro and I take the fam out to a fancy dinner. And we went last night. Oh. My. Heavens. Two and a half hours later, we waddled/staggered back out to the cold where the handsome man smartly gave our car keys to The Husband, as I had consumed enough wine to have become a cautionary tale.

The evening's highlights included watching my 98-year-old grandma's face as she realized that we were paying HOW MUCH for the privilege of COOKING OUR OWN FOOD? The biggest stress we had was worrying that somehow the check would find its way to her, which would have resulted in an immediate heart attack. (Although the drama of a heart attack easily could have created a chain of events that could have led up to a free meal.....hmmmmmmm....)

Susie held her own in the cheese course, keeping an impressively steady pace of stabbing bread or apples and dipping them in the molten cheese. The Boy was seated at the end of the table so had to stand to dip. I did have a moment of passing guilt as I saw that my dad was working very hard at coordinating the kids in their fondue efforts. But it passed. Something about all that cheese makes guilt not last long.

But it was the CHOCOLATE that was truly the super-prize of the evening. I was already way too full from my main course (shrimp and steak) so I chose to be a witness instead of a participant. The Boy was asleep by then (and doesn't really like chocolate anyway). The parents were also stuffed. So Susie, as well as Lil Bro and his Hot Blonde Girlfriend, sat in a row and ate melted chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers FLAM-fricking-BE. With cheesecake. Here's what they looked like:

More images of our evening are below and here: