In case you’re wondering, Tom won the card game

We drank wine, ate chocolate, and played cards into the wee hours of Christmas Eve.

Two notes to accurately set the scene:

1) That small plate of chocolate does not represent the amount of chocolate consumed. The measurement was “brick”. We ate a brick of chocolate. Before the night was over, we were putting chocolate shavings in our wine. When I say we, I mean my mom, Abby and myself. Don’t want the boys’ wine-drinking reputations to be tarnished.

2) It wasn’t really the wee hours of the night. I have a 4-month old. I rarely stay up past 10pm. When we party, 11:30pm the new 4am.

I like this photo because it shows a little of the chaos of the evening. We have about 12 photos of my mom from different angles at different times with her eyes closed. She doesn’t close her eyes so much in real life.

See how you can tell my dad’s smiling with his tongue out…even from the back? That’s how you know he’s having a good time.

I took the following photo with complete disregard of the focus.

I was trying to be artsy. Tom knew it would turn out bad the moment I said, “let’s all put our glasses together, I want a picture of just our hands and glasses!”

He responded, “Um, that’s not going to turn out.”

How did he know?

We were having SO MUCH fun that David woke up to join the party, with complete disregard of the fact that Santa Claus cannot visit little boys who are awake during the wee hours of Christmas Eve. (Later that night, David reminded mommy when the true wee hours are.)

I worried that all these photos of all these wine glasses and open-mouthed smiles might give some the wrong impression about how my family spends Christmas Eve.

There is a difference between celebrating and too much celebrating. We were celebrating, and (oh my gosh I’m so sorry for the cheesy phrase I’m about to type) completely drunk on family.