Christmas Eve after work I'll pack up my cat and personals and travel to my folk's place an hour away. Traditionally we have a formal Christmas Eve dinner which we actually clean house for, dress up, and light candles. But this year it will be rushed so I'm sure it won't be near as fancy or relaxing. My grandma and aunt are flying in that night and the airport is like an hour and a half away from the house. No doubt the rest of the evening will be spent cleaning up and wrapping the last of the presents. My grandma will go to bed as soon as they reach the house, the rest of us will go to bed way too late (like we do every Christmas Eve)(I'll be sleeping on the floor of my sister's room), and wake up earlier than I'd like the next morning to dump out our stockings and open presents. We'll have a nice semi-formal breakfast, watch a fashion show by my sister since my mother still makes her try on ALL her clothes for her, and then bum around the house for the rest of the day while wading through the empty boxes, wrapping paper and gifts all over the living room floor. We might watch a DVD, but we usually don't even watch anything special on Christmas Day. I'll help cook Christmas dinner, we'll eat, and then I'll likely have to leave right away to come back home because I'll probably be due in at work at some unearthly hour the next morning.
Pretty typical for my family. Relaxing and lazy. Kind of a bummer that the traditions will be corrupted due to the late flight my aunt booked. She and my grandma are usually with us when we have our nice formal Christmas Eve dinner. I think she wanted to spend as little time out here as possible this year, for the sake of my aging grandma. Which at the same time is robbing us of time with her, as we don't know how much longer she'll be with us.
