Christmas at the Hawks'

Christmas is always a super festive time! Our family tradition is to celebrate with just our immediate family (the Hawks, Naan, and Shweetie and me) on Christmas Eve. We have a lobster/crab feast, open all of our presents from each other and friends and Santa, and then get cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory. I'm not quite sure how cheesecake became part of the tradition, but we now do that in lieu of driving around looking at Christmas lights, which is what we used to do when Naan and I were little. Too bad our new tradition is such much more calorific than our old tradition.

This year, Naan found cute Christmas shirts at Target for us women to wear


I was really excited about it apparently


Yes, she wanted stamps for Christmas...nerd


Checking out a book from Santa

Shweetie and I always stay over on Christmas Eve, and help get the house ready the next morning for the Hawk's extended family to come over. Hawk serves a casual lunch, and people sort of filter in anytime after 1:00 pm, bringing their own potluck items for lunch. Because people all arrive at different times, lunch takes place anywhere between 1:00 and 4:00, and it's pretty much nonstop eating for everyone all afternoon.

The calm before the storm

Once everyone's finally arrived, we open presents. It's always crazy and loud and overwhelming, with shouts of "THANK YOU!" heard over the din of the paper shuffling and laughter from 20+ people.

After all of the family opens presents, anyone who needs to take off for dinner with their in-laws or whatever often leaves. Then Hawk takes care of dinner for everyone remaining, and there's still always so many of us, the aunts and uncles and Paw-Paw sit at the "adult" table in the dining room, while the rest of us cousins and kiddos sit at the "kids" table in the kitchen.

Shweetie got to the brussels sprouts, needlessly lining them all up into neat rows


Hawk kept yelling at him, "Stop it!!"


Dinner at the kids' table


The brussels sprouts, after Hawk reclaimed 'em

Right before dinner, Cousin Traveler went to pick up her boyfriend from the airport. He had just come home from visiting his mom in Indiana, but wanted to come and see everyone. They got back to the house while we were still finishing up dinner, but Traveler immediately grabbed a glass of sparking cider and insisted on doing a toast. Us kids all filed into the dining room, and Traveler announced that a week before, she and her boyfriend had gotten engaged! She hadn't wanted to say anything until he was there, so she'd managed to hold onto the secret all day. Her immediate family had all known too, and somehow they had managed to not say anything all day either. The cheering when she made the announcement was deafening. Unfortunately, Shweetie was on the phone upstairs when Traveler had made the announcement, so there are no photos of the mayhem, but apparently when he heard the uproar, he said to his sister, "I think someone just got engaged."

All in all, it was a great Christmas. :)