Christmas with Ma and Pa Hat

I hope all my readers had a very Merry Christmas. Friday evening Travalon and I went to a choir member’s Christmas party and hung out with other choir members. It was a lot of fun, and they were giving away rosaries that had belonged to our dearly departed organist, so I took a couple and the next day gave one to a choir member who hadn’t been able to attend the party. It was a lot of fun with really good food.

Christmas Eve Tiffy was in town, so in the morning she, Rich, Travalon, and I got together for coffee. Travalon and I had been expecting to go to his family gathering that afternoon, but it had been changed just a few days earlier to Christmas Day, and we had already promised Ma and Pa Hat that we would visit that day. So that afternoon we went to see Travalon’s mother, then I sang at our church’s “Midnight Mass” at 5 pm (seriously, they always do the readings from the Midnight Mass, not the Vigil Mass), and then afterwards we invited Rich over for crab cakes and bacon-wrapped sirloin. Sounds decadent, right? But somehow I did manage to stay below my calorie count that day, which was an unusual occurrence the last few days.

Christmas Day Travalon and I went to Mass, where we saw Tiffy and her parents, then we got on the road and drove to Ma and Pa Hat’s house, playing many rounds of Twenty Questions along the way. My parents, brother, and one nephew were already gathered, and we had lasagna for dinner and cassata for dessert, then we opened presents, and then I talked everyone into playing – you guessed it – Twenty Questions. Travalon and I are generally pretty good at figuring out what the other one is thinking, so it was fun to get some fresh perspectives into the game. Eventually my other nephew showed up with a pie, so that is why I couldn’t stay under my calorie goal for that day. Also, while I got six flights of stairs, my steps for the day were pathetic, well under 4000. Then Travalon and I drove to La Crosse and stayed at a hotel on French Island.

Yesterday we had the day off of work, so we slept in and then swam in the hotel pool before going to explore French Island. It looks like a really fun place to check out in the summer. We went to a coffee shop in downtown La Crosse and then hit the road, playing more Twenty Questions and talking to Jilly Moose about her Christmas. (I talked; Travalon was driving.) George Michael had died the day before, and I remembered that back in June we had recorded a concert of his from 2008 that they played on Public TV, so we watched that, and we also watched the movie Enchanted, which is really cute. It is about a cartoon princess who gets forced into the real world. In the evening we went over to Rich’s house and had more lasagna (that he made) and cassata (that I had made). That is really the traditional Christmas dinner in my circles, and what a delicious one! But you can see why it has been very difficult for me to meet my calorie goals!

Famous Hat