Christmas with the family

It might be a recipe for disaster for some families, but for mine… well… yeah. It probably is.

[img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2006/FamilyXmasEve001.jpg[/img]

Regardless, let’s pop the top off of our cheap bottles of strawberry sparkling wine and have ourselves a Christmas Eve dinner!!!

And that’s what it was.

‘Twas the Christmas Dinner on the night before Christmas that I partook with my mum, my brother, and mum’s boyfriend Brad.

There were presents and food and discussions on how crap Australian Idol is and how much debt that Kasey chick from the second Idol has gotten herself in for the rest of her life.

Sure. Because that’s what a Christmas is for a musical family.

So as not to leave anything out, those that know me know that I live with my Dad and while you might notice he wasn’t at this dinner, that’s the usual order for things. My brother and I do Christmas Eve dinners with Mum and Christmas Day lunches with Dad, being the good Jews that we are.

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[i]Brad takes a sip of the strawberry sparkling wine my brother bought to avoid the camera & I catch my brother Michael while he’s unaware.[/i]

So we gave presents and such things were gotten like car carpets for my brother…

Yeah… I didn’t think it was such a great present for me to give to him even though he asked for them so I also bought him a Home Recording Book For Dummies… not so much because he’s a dummy… I mean, in a sense [b]we’re all dummies[/b] in one way or another… but knowing that he plans to record our band’s EP himself, I figure he should know what he’s on about for something for a change and figured this would help.

And he got me an Ice Cream Maker… which rocks… and is cool. I don’t really mean for the pun but hey, I’ll take whatever I can get.

I got Mum a big book of thriller stories… which should keep her busy for a while. She’d asked me for a book.

And she got me Doom on DVD (which I actually liked… hey, it’s better than anything Uwe Boll could ever make times four-thousand-and-twelve :P) and a nice black shirt.

It’s so nice a black shirt that if I’m actually invited to any New Years Eve parties, I’ll wear it out to them and you can say “Hey Leigh! Are you wearing that nice black shirt your Mum got you for Christmas?” and I can say “Why yes it is! How on earth did you know?”

And then I will probe you for information as to how you know. PROBE I TELL YOU!

Brad even got myself and Mike a calendar (mine of movies, Mike’s on guitars) and a dvd for each… and we’d gotten him that Neil Young movie on DVD.

[img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2006/FamilyXmasEve003.jpg[/img]
[i]Mum watches the flames dance over the pool of Sambuca.[/i]

And then we had dinner. I’d brought with a bottle of unwooded Drayton’s chardonnay and while Mike was content with his sparking strawberry crap, Mum and I shared the bottle of chardonnay.

For our feast, Mum had made risotto, roasted veggies, roasted honey-mustard seed chicken with gravy, all with roasted chunks of sweet potato… ’twas a hearty feast, I tell you what!

And after it, there was a traditionally Southern-USA sweet potato pie with cream. Mmm mmm mmm. Yummy. You don’t get much better than that for someone who was partially raised in Texas.

And then came the coffee.

Which tasted like cumin.

Because the container which held the coffee or sugar or something which was in the coffee, previously held cumin which, while it was cleaned out, still seemed to have retained the smell of the cumin enough to make both Michael and Brad feel like they were drinking a new type of coffee… Cumin Coffee!

[b]It’s Cumin Coffee at Starbucks! [i]Cum In and try it![/i][/b]

We went from coffee to Sambuca where Mum did the traditional thing of putting a couple of coffee beans in the shot of Sambuca and lighting it on fire.

[img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2006/FamilyXmasEve004.jpg[/img]

Dance flame, dance!

All in all, ’twas a good night of food and fun and pressies.

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[i]Peeking out from the blinds at Mum’s place, the IR filter always make it seem like snow has fallen in Sydney…[/i]

Posted in Life, Photography, Random Nights Out
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