Apres moi, le deluge...

Christmas eve...may I just say, that when Chris and I were looking at our town house, one of the first things we talked about was how great the layout of the kitchen/dining room/living room would be for our Christmas eve party? 

So it goes without saying that we were super excited for our party this year.  Chris agreed to do most of the food prep, if I would do the cleaning/organizing/decorating.  And since I had long since ceased to care if the house was beautiful, I readily agreed.

For those of you who are new, we host my family every year on Christmas eve for a Nabs Party.  Nabs are what Chris' family call appetizers, so everything is casual and fun.  In years past, we've just ordered up a chicken nugget tray from Chick-fil-A, but for the past couple of years, Chris has stepped off the verge of crazy and decided to COOK our own nuggets.  And this year was no exception.

So the night before, we're in the kitchen and he says to me, "How many chicken breasts do you think I need to thaw to feed everyone?"  And I say, "I don't know...one each?"  And he says, "No way!  We need more than that!"  So he pulls out our bag of frozen chicken breasts (we buy the big kahuna bags at Costco) and starts counting them out...at TWENTY-TWO I stop him and say, "Whoa, nelly, you're going to be cooking ALL NIGHT!" 

Please to remember there are only TWELVE of us, and 2 of those are 6 and 3 years old respectively!

So Christmas eve dawns, and the kids and I get to work cleaning the house and Chris gets to work in the kitchen.  Our running joke with each other was that, Christmas 2014 was brought to you by cream cheese, cheddar cheese and jalapeno peppers because here's what was on our menu for the night:

• chicken nuggets
• steak bites
• boursin cheese (made with cream cheese)
• jalapeno pimento cheese (made with cream cheese and cheddar cheese)
• jalapeno poppers (made with cream cheese, cheddar cheese and bacon)
• cold spinach dip
• warm spinach dip (made with cream cheese)
• chips and salsa
• cheese and cracker tray
• homemade cheese ball (made with cream cheese and cheddar cheese)

and for dessert!

• mini-cheesecakes with cherries
• pecan tassies
• cherry blossoms

So some of these things Chris had put together the night before, but he still spent the bulk of Christmas eve in the kitchen, which is why it wasn't until later in the afternoon that we noticed that our roof was leaking.

Oh, yes, you read that right.  It poured rain the WHOLE day, and I had noticed what appeared to be a water stain on the ceiling in the Girl's room, and mentioned it to Christopher as a cause for concern, but we had been so wrapped up in med school applications and worry with that, that we sort of just ignored the ceiling in the hopes that it would go away on it's own.

No such luck.

But water dripping through a heating and cooling vent onto the floor, will awaken you to a sense of the reality of homeownership faster than anything else, so we set a bucket underneath it, Chris stormed up into the attic to marvel at the inadequacies of the roof, and I called the HOA and left an urgent voicemail because it's CHRISTMAS EVE, no one is in the office.

Then we went back downstairs and had a party!  Because what else can you do?

Everyone came, it was SUPER fun, my sister and her whole family had been sick since before Thanksgiving so we hadn't seen any of them in a looooooooooooong time, and we had really missed them.  So we talked and laughed and ate and laughed at Chris making this MOUNTAIN of food for all of us.  We read the Christmas story from Luke 2 and the kids opened presents from their Nana and Popper.  It had been such a long time since we had all gotten together, that I was just happy sitting on the couch surrounded by most of my favorite people in the whole world.

Needless to say, we were eating chicken nuggets for DAYS and DAYS.