But our family motto isn't "It ain't Christmas till someone's crying" for no reason!
Josie and her beau Nick were quite excited to be hosting the rest of us for Christmas Eve. Nick has a nifty house in a neighborhood just a few removed from ours. With Ty's whole crew in South Dakota, we'd all fit quite comfortably around Josie's dining table. The plan was to have crab legs, shrimp and a Manhattan roast with salad, sides and lots of Christmas desserts, then play the dice game for fun and profit. We planned to have our larger, all families gift exchange at Ty's when they return from the West, on BoopityBoop's birthday. We'd have presents and birthday cake and the kids could even have a sleep over!
That was the plan.
I swear, God's sides must ache from laughing so hard.
While Jay and I have not given the virus much thought (and absolutely no respect) since we both tested positive for the antibodies in 5/20, our kids continue to be plagued by it. Kitten's daycare has had to close rooms due to people testing positive, leaving Megan occassionally up the creek without childcare but BoopityBoop are in a smaller facility that has to shut down operations entirely when anyone tests positive or is even Covid Adjacent. Katie has therefore had the girls home 6 of the last 8 weeks. She is quite understandably wary of ...Okay, I'm not really sure. Seems to me that the hysterical over reaction of our institutions to a virus that doesn't make most young people sick is what's causing all of Katie's problems, not the virus itself.
I mean, can you blame the bees if every time one buzzed in your yard, your kids all run screaming and crying and upending furniture in their desperation to avoid getting stung?
I don't think so.
On Tuesday, Nick tested positive for Covid. His symptoms were a scratchy throat and a runny nose. Pre 2020, no one would have thought twice about such paltry cold symptoms but in the age of covid, Josie was determined to assure Katie that her house was safe for entertaining so she and Nick tested themselves. Just like last year, this attempt at goodwill backfired bigly.
Josie called me as soon as she had the bad news. She was very sad. Jay and I accepted hosting duties, told the other kids and now our Christmas eve party was down to 8 (that number includes BoopityBoop.)
We had the roast, Katie was bringing the salad and appetizers, Zach was bringing bread and a side dish; the feast was on! We'd miss Josie and Nick but we'd manage to have fun anyway.
Little did we know that all this was merely a prelude to drama.
On Christmas Eve morning (Friday), Jay checked his voicemail. There was a very excited message from his favorite neice (her description) saying how excited she was to see us that evening and please call his brother (her Dad) to assure him that he was invited to Christmas Eve at our house, too.
Jay and I looked at each other and screamed "What's going on???!!"
Long, awkward story later, what's going on was that Zach was sick and tired of not seeing his Pivec cousins, so he let them know we'd be here on Christmas eve and told them to drop by. He really didn't think through what it would mean if our sit down dinner of roast beef was inundated with 40 more Pivecs. Which seemed like a very real possibility for a second or two there. Zach also didn't take into consideration his father's very serious view of the responsibility of hosting. If Jay can't invite you to sit down for a bite, he's not going to invite you at all. If you drop in unexpected, he's still going to offer you half his dinner.
Zach managed to undo all the angst he'd tossed into our morning and in the long run, Jay got to have a lovely long conversation with (his favorite) niece and I got to have a lovely long chat with one of my favorite nieces as well. Everyone was well taken care of for Christmas Eve dinner.
For the first time in decades, we made no attempt to go to a Christmas children's vigil mass. Since we were going to be just the two of us on Christmas morning, we planned to go to the late morning mass at the Basilica of St. Mary downtown. The Basilica is our home parish but we hadn't tried to do Christmas mass there since our kids were little and the church was so packed that we ended up with 1000 others in the undercroft, watching mass on the jumbo tron. This was long before live streaming mass was a thing. We didn't like it then and Jay and I still don't like it.
For the past 12 years or so, we'd gone to a church in our neighborhood and just braved the crowds on Christmas eve. One year, we attended the Catholic church in Ty's small town. The mass was lovely but we sat in the balcony, which is so steep and high that poor Zach and Jay, who both suffer from acrophobia, were in a sweat of discomfort the whole time. They don't want to do that again.
But the Basilica is an extremely beautiful church and when it's decorated for Christmas it's almost hard to believe it's even real. Most years, the Christmas masses have been standing room only but we figure in the second year of Covid, our chances of getting seats were probably pretty good. So that's what we did and it was wonderful.
The party on Christmas Eve began at about 5:00. Jay had the roast ready to go in the oven, a fire in the firepit out on the deck, cigars for anyone who wanted and a Christmas playlist on in the house, which he and I had tidied up, dusted, vacuumed and swept. The kids brought cheese and crackers, appetizers, side dishes etc. and the party began.
BoopityBoop inhaled an entire can of black olives in about the time it took me to type this line.
And Josie, who had continued to test negative all week, showed up in time to eat with us! The only way she could convince herself she wasn't putting any of us at risk was to wear 2 masks all evening. I have no idea who she though she was protecting, or from what. I'm very afraid that she'll grow up to be one of those extremely eccentric people who do all sorts of bizarre things that only make sense to them. As my daughter, she was at great risk of this from day 1 but my oddness is always rooted in logic and her's clearly is not. But we were delighted that she came!
The dinner was fantastic. After that, we moved to the living room and played the dice game. BoopityBoop were the only little kids involved and they understood the rules but they both opened things they preferred to keep right from the beginning, and several people had brought gifts with the pair of them in mind, so there was no crying during the game, and afterwards, they each got lots of presents. It was perfect! Then we ate a mountain of cookies and the party broke up early. The twins had to get home to bed so Santa could visit and once they were gone, the party was pretty much over. That was fine, it had been a grand Christmas Eve party, even if we'd had to throw our Plan B party together in two days!
Long before midnight, Jay and I were snug in our beds, with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads and no idea that the Christmas Drama Llama wasn't quite through with us yet.