I woke up at 5am so that I could put the presents under the tree for Anna. (I was afraid that if I left them there all night, the cats would pee on them.) Jack woke up a bit later and we read the newspaper and drank tea while we waited for Anna to wake up.

And waited.
And waited.

Finally at 7:30 I went in and woke Anna up. “Anna! Santa came!” After a few repetitions of this, she finally woke up and became appropriately excited. She opened her presents, seemed quite happy with her haul, and then it was time for last minute cleaning since the Entire Family was coming over at 2.(The Entire Family included all five of Jack’s other kids, all five grandkids, spouses and boyfriends of the kids, mother of the kids (yes, that would be the ex-wife, with whom I get along quite nicely), husband of the mother of the kids, brother of the mother of the kids and his wife and kids, mother of the mother of the kids, my sister and her kids, and my mother. I’m sure I missed someone in there.)

Everything was going great. I had the timing of everything down pat, and I figured I’d put the turkey in the oven so that it would be finished about half an hour before everyone arrived.

That plan held out until Jack spoke to one of his daughters who told him that everything was, in fact, supposed to start at 1pm. Since it was 10 at the time, I proceeded to have a minor freak-out.

But, amazingly, everything came together, I finished the cleaning, people arrived shortly after 1, and when the turkey as finished I assigned one of the mensfolk to carve it. Everything was going great.

Until the eighteen-month old grandkid smacked his head into the edge of the dining room table and opened up a significant gash on his forehead. I did the sensible thing and yelled for my sister-the-pediatrician. She proceeded, with utter calm, to a)comfort baby and get him to stop crying, b) create a makeshift pressure bandage from one of my cheap Walgreen’s kitchen towels and a hair pony, and c) assess the injury and inform the parents that it really needed stitches in order to avoid a fairly significant scar. (My brilliant contribution was yelling for my sister in the first place.)

While the parents were getting stuff together to take the kid to the ER (since all of the Urgent Care type places were closed for Christmas), another kid came in with a nose streaming blood. Fortunately, that one was a minor issue, and was easily dealt with by her mother. But there was definitely more blood than I’m used to on a Christmas!

We waited until the parents came back from the ER to do the gift exchange, and fortunately the ER was fairly empty. They made it back shortly over an hour later with a glued-together kid, and the rest of the gathering went smoothly and with no further bloodletting.

Overall it was a pretty terrific day. Everyone got along, we ate too much, we laughed a lot, and injuries were minor. What more could you ask for?

Okay, less blood for Christmas would probably be a good thing, but I don’t want to be too demanding.