A Ninja Christmas Brunch

My family is impossibly geeky. It should not be this much fun to use the note-assigned whistles from our traditional British holiday crackers to play "Jingle Bells". 

Victorian Trading Company

Next year, in addition to the holiday crackers we decided that we will also get a peppermint pig. It turns out the only reason anything has been going wrong for any of us is that you are supposed to get one of these and beat it to smithereens with a tiny elegant hammer then share the peppermint shards, and we haven't been doing this. Someone should have said something. I probably wouldn't even have developed fibromyalgia had I known to do this every year. 

I worked all the last two days cleaning and organizing and prepping food, then woke up early this morning. (Actually this was just because I can't sleep anymore). I prepared a brunch which consisted of miniature frittatas made with local fresh eggs, portabellas and baby spinach, home-fried potatoes with Vidalia onions, gingerbread pancakes with powdered sugar, chicken apple sausages and fresh pineapple with pink lady apples. I made a large buffet  thermos of hot chocolate from scratch with cocoa powder, sugar and fresh milk.  There were also dates and nuts in the shell. I whipped cream from scratch, and shaved bittersweet chocolate myself with a vegetable peeler into delicate curls. 

In other words, this was some bad-assed shit. NINJA brunch.

We ran out of food before everyone could get seconds, which was either really cool or embarrassing.

Of course, my husband was called to do work on-call right when we were exchanging gifts, and then one child had a personal emotional crisis and required counseling while standing barefoot in the snow, threatening to run away from home. Another child forgot to take his ADD meds and narrowly missed breaking every picture in the house while he ran around armed with multiple Nerf guns. Somebody's new Narnia shield got broken and they forgot to practice their non-violent communication when explaining their upset to the unwitting perpetrator.

It turned out I am catching a cold, so I progressively lost my voice during the gathering and by the end, when I said goodbye to my guests, I called out, "Have fun storming the castle!" in a voice like gargled cat hairs. 

Christmas is finally over. And I think we snuck up on that shit and smashed it like Silent Death smashes a peppermint pig. Even if we are all bat-shit crazy.