Christmas Chaos 2025

I love our Christmas traditions. As I get older, and after losing Bill, I tend to be more sentimental and grateful for the important people in my life. Let's face it, I'm sappy as shit anymore, and that's not the old GunDiva.

Christmas Eve used to be hosted at my Grandma Mary and Grandpa Moe's house - it was always just full-on entropy: loud, chaotic, and lovely. Grandma, Grandpa, aunts, uncles, parents, cousins, and the handful of adopted family crammed into their little house full of unconditional love. After both Grandma and Grandpa passed, my Uncle Russ started hosting. It's a bit more civilized, but that's only because the littles aren't so little anymore, with the exception of the Gremlin. The menu is pretty set, and we all contribute: potato enchiladas (Jay and me); tamales (Nebalee); beans, green chili, rice, tortillas (Uncle Russ and Aunt Marg); and assorted sides and desserts. It's my favorite meal of the year, hands down.

Many years ago, we started making our gifts to exchange, and it has become my favorite gift exchange as well, because everything is handmade with love. In the past, Jay and I have gifted food items, but most recently have been gifting crafts. This year's craft was one I learned from the Skill-A-Week program I subscribed to: homemade candles.

Jay and I made the candles, then he painted a small character on them.

Nebalee always gifts glasses of some sort, either shot glasses or margarita glasses. One year, she did brass glasses for Moscow Mules. They're always fun, and this year was no different.

Fancy glasses for the Chocolate martini she made, along with
homemade mint extract for everyone.

Dinner and drinks surrounded by people I love, and who I only get to see a couple of times a year, made my Christmas Eve special, as it does every year.

My beautiful aunt and uncle

Obligatory picture in front of the tree

Cheers!

Digger and the Gremlin wearing last year's shirts,
Digger's: The Legend, Gremlin's: The Legacy

After a few hours in the chaos, it felt good to go home and sit by the tree for just a few minutes. As much as I love and look forward to Christmas Eve every year, it drains this introvert's battery. Having a few quiet moments before jumping back into family-filled holiday fun is essential.

Christmas morning was breathtaking. No snow, in fact, it ended up being in the 60s, but it was still breathtaking.

We really do live in a postcard.

Jay and I always do our personal gift exchange first thing in the morning, sitting in bed, before the day starts. I have deep, deep love for the "good" ice, and that lovely hubby of mine got me my own "good" ice machine. I'd been dragging my feet on buying one, because our other ice machine was working just fine and I couldn't see spending the money for another one when ours was working. The beauty about gifts is that I don't have to feel guilty about replacing something :) 

Our old ice machine found a home with Ashinator and her hubby, so all is well. 

I didn't take a single picture the entire day, after taking pictures of my ice machine. I guess that means I was too busy having fun. We visited Jay's family, then Ashinator, and then headed up to the Lodge to spend time with Mom and sibs. By 8:00 o'clock, I was done for and headed up to bed, while everyone else hung out.

Normally, the Christmas festivities end Christmas night, but Nebalee bought all of us sibs and spouses entrance into Beat the Bomb in Denver, so on Friday night we ended up having a sibs' night, which was a blast! We split into two teams and competed against each other in different problem solving arcade-type games, in which we were a part of the arcade game. It's very difficult to explain, but so much freaking fun. 

Each team is competing for time to defuse the "bomb". Nebalee's team, The Shenanigators, beat our team, F-cawf. The better the team does at each game, the more time they have to diffuse the bomb. Of course, the bomb is rigged, so everyone gets doused in slime. It was very Nickelodeon, which made our Gen X hearts happy.

Family Bonding

Monster, my youngest, moved to Arizona a year or so ago. He does that, gets itchy feet and moves. He's the one of my three who just packs up and moves, always has. I'm not brave enough to do that, I'm a Colorado girl through and through and can't imagine living anywhere else (except when it's below zero, then the thought flits across my mind).

Deejo and his family moved back to Arizona a year ago, after Monster did. Now, Monster lives with Deejo's family and it seems to be working.

That was a round about way of saying that I haven't seen my brother or my son in a while. Nebalee found us cheap airfare, so we flew out to spend a few days with them.

It was so good to see my Monster (and the rest of the fam, obvs). We spent one night sitting on the couch, watching hockey. I can't remember the last time I got to hang with him and yell at the TV.

Since we had some free time and wanted to go do something, we put on our thinking caps and came up with axe throwing. I don't know who had the idea, or even where it came from, but that's what we came up with. I got on Groupon and found a place nearby that was reasonable. Nebalee and I got everything organized and the next day, off we went.

We had a 90-minute session that included some very basic instruction and practice, then we broke up into teams and competed against each other. We started with two-handed throwing, to get the hang of it, then went to one-handed. Because I like to be able to do things ambidextrously, I tried throwing both right- and left-handed. Monster and Deejo also played along with the non-dominant hand practice.

Asset, Nebalee's daughter, was apprehensive at first and didn't really want to keep going after her first couple of throws. It's deceptively harder than it looks. But then she got the hang of it. She got the hang of it so well that she was the only one on our team to put any points on the board when we were playing 21.

Team Axcellent

Team Axekickers

Check out the witty, axe-themed nicknames

I was fairly confident that our team (Axekickers) was gonna kick Axcellent's axe, but they beat us two of three games. It's all good though, we had a great time and the games helped us get out of our heads while we were throwing, and get comfortable. The last game we played was "Survivor" and it was each person for themselves. I was feeling pretty confident, as was everyone else. Holy cow! Asset started off strong and kept going. She beat three or four of us in a row before getting knocked out. Luckily, we all had two lives to lose, so she had the opportunity to come back and redeem herself.

Asset had a bit of a rough start to the day, but stuck with it and started kicking everyone's axe. Monster took to it like a duck to water. The rest of us were pretty hit or miss. She and Monster probably threw the best, each with a handful of X-ring throws in a row. If I had laid down a bet, Asset or Monster would have been the two I'd put my money on to win.

Then Nebalee stepped up. Asset had just thrown three (or was it four) bulls eyes in a row. They stepped to the line together, mother vs daughter, and Nebalee threw her axe. It wasn't a great throw, but it stuck in the 3 ring. Asset threw her axe and I don't know what the hell happened, but her axe throwing mojo completely disappeared. Like - *poof* - gone. Nebalee had successfully knocked Asset out of the competition and had to face Monster, who had also been kicking everyone's axe.

Nebalee had her best throw of the day and ended up victorious. I'm sure if I was a better writer, I could write a tear jerker of a screenplay about how the underdog came from nowhere and beat the two best throwers with the best throw of the day. Just imagine the slo-mo montage with inspirational music as we watch her axe leave her hands and rotate toward the target. The crowd erupts in cheers and the loser gives her a heartfelt congratulations. Everything is right in the world.

The whole thing was so much fun, but there was one last throw I wanted to try: two axes at a time! If throwing one axe was fun, throwing two had to be twice as fun. It was.

Now, some people might raise an eyebrow at using axe throwing as family bonding, but it was incredible! I think that this is something we'll have to do on the regular. We don't have a nearby axe bar (yet), but once it opens, I'll be taking my other heathens for some mom/heathi bonding.

THIS is a bracket I can get behind!

I follow Grammarly on Facebook and several times a day, they post something that makes me laugh or cringe (or both).

Over the weekend, they posted "The Battle to Determine the Most Maddening Writing Error".  I don't do March Madness brackets or anything of the sort, but this?  This I can get behind.  Take a look at the competitors:

Your/You're beat out Two/Too/To in the first match-up.  Today's match-up is "I could care less" v.s. "Could/would/should of".  I voted for the could/would/should of, which makes me want to scream, "HAVE! It's could HAVE!" and then mutter under my breath.

When I shared the bracket with Digger, though, he lost it over "I could care less" and went on a mini-rant.  I guess the family (the two of us anyway) is divided for this match, but that just makes it more interesting.

Here are my picks (I meant to post this before Grammar Madness began, but I'm late):

And here are Digger's picks:

After we completed our brackets, we had a rousing discussion about who was going to win.  I'm fairly certain that Misused Apostrophes is going to take it all, but he's pretty certain Irregardless is going to win.

I can't wait to show him Mother Knows Best!