holiday recap
December 26, 2007

We had my family�s Christmas on Saturday, in Bettendorf. Everyone made it, and MyNiece brought her fella. It was okay, despite the cruddy weather. We had dense fog on Saturday, rain and sleet on Saturday night, and that turned into an ice storm. Then we were treated to snow and very high winds for Sunday. All the traveling went okay though, everyone got there and back safely.

We all met at the hotel and had a nice visit, and after a while, the over-21-but-under-70 crowd headed out to the boat. We were there about an hour or so--long enough to lose a little money--except for my oldest nephew--he played roulette and made 60 bucks!

Then we headed back to the hotel and got everybody together to go to The River House--a really neat pub and grill in Moline, down in the historic John Deere district. Decent dinner. I had the combo dinner with the glazed salmon and the bourbon steak. Not great, but not bad. The mashed potatoes were awful, but the apple crisp that came with it was outstanding.

After that we headed back across the river and had our gift exchange in a big sitting area off the lobby. Everyone got something nice (we drew names among the kids and grandkids) and MyNiece had a lot of fun with giving some gag gifts, too. She got her grandma a candle in the shape of a cobra! Poor mom--she's never going to shake that nickname. But she thought it was very funny. MyNiece wasn't taking any chances, though--she put a tag on it saying it came from Spouse!

Some of us ended the evening playing a game. After Mom and Dad tuckered out, Spouse and my brothers decided they were worn out too, but the rest of us played a game called Apples to Apples, which was lots of fun and gave us all a chance to be very silly. But we had to wrap things up by 11:30, because we knew we'd have to get up and clean off the cars in the morning.

And after meeting for breakfast at the restaurant attached to the hotel, we all got busy doing just that. MyNiece managed to break the door handle off the car in the process (I love that young woman, because she's as klutzy as I am!) Once everything was warmed up and de-iced, we all hit the various roads.

It was actually kind of fun this year, but you could tell we were all having our little Sammy moments. We are missing him pretty bad this time of year.

One we fought our way home, I had to prepare a full homemade meal for Spouse, since he was crying that he wasn�t getting any home cooking. (And since I get guilted to death whenever he has to be anywhere near my family.) I did a meatloaf, mashed butter-red potatoes, baby peas, and dinner rolls, all of which were very tasty. But exhausting.

I crashed early�I didn�t sleep well at all at the hotel, and the ride home in the wind and snow wore me out even more. Since Mr. B was still at the kennel, I ended up sleeping for 10 hours straight�unheard of for me, but I guess I really needed it.