I saw that December was going to be a busy month, so I called Trish back in late November asking her again when Ed's birthday was again. I could not remember what date it was. She said it was the 18th and we looked to see what day that fell on and it was on a Saturday this year. I asked her if Ed would like to do some sort of lunch or dinner that day? You know, similar to what we did for you? She said, he'd probably like that and she said she would ask him and get back to me.
Then Grandma posted something about having a Christmas party at her house sometime near Christmas. She suggested the Thursday before Christmas in the middle of the day. I wrote her back stating that no one was going to be able to come. She asked, why? I said, because everyone will be at work. She continued; doesn't everyone have that week off? I said, no. Maybe if we were all in high school or college we would. She replied with oh, well, then when should we have it? I told her to call everyone and ask their availability since some of us work weekends. She didn't and just posted it to our Facebook group family chat. No one would answer her, and it got so frustrating.
Trish got back to me and said that he would love to have a birthday dinner and invite his daughters and their husbands and kids. She said that Ed wanted to go to the Ram in Puyallup and Trish said she would make the reservations and get everything taken care of. I told her we would meet them at the Ram. I already had his birthday present, so we really didn't have to do anything except show up.
Eventually, everyone settled on the 18th around 12:30. So we were going to attend Grandma's Christmas party, eat dinner there, play bingo and then head to Puyallup to meet up with Trish, Ed and his family at the Ram. I wasn't sure if we were going to eat anything there or get an appetizer or a dessert. I guess we would have to see how much we ate at Grandma's house.
Josh asked Ben if we needed a turkey because Heather works at Costco and employees get free turkey's and Ben said no but then I interrupted and told him that we could definitely use it if they didn't want it. We arranged to go get it and then I took it over to Grandma's house, along with my extra potatoes, and dropped them off so she didn't have to spend any extra money on anything. Anything I could scrounge up for Grandma the better.
That day, we got up, loitered around, finally got ready, loaded up the Escape...since it was my turn to drive, had to really convince Doug to come, which he did and he sped off, we loaded the recycle and headed into Rainier. We made a quick stop at the recycle and then went to Grandma's. We went in and helped her finish the food and get everything ready for when everyone gets here. Grandma said that Deion would be late, and we could start without him.
Everyone arrived around 12:30, we chit chatted for a little bit and then Grandma said the food was done officially. She had a turkey, a spiral ham, potatoes, various veggies (both cooked and raw), rolls, Jell-O, desserts and she even made her famous punch. I filled my plate way too full and ate way too much. It's hard to not overeat during the holidays. We chatted with our cousins at the table while we ate a Christmas lunch together. Everyone seemed to be doing okay.
Angela, Grandma and her kids exchanged presents between Christmas lunch and bingo.
After we were done eating, we cleared the table and got out our annual bingo (we missed 2020 because of stupid Covid) stuff out and set it up. Earlier last week, I went and bought a bunch of prizes to replenish the bingo bin. Grandma was the caller and we all got out our cards, some of us working two bingo cards at a time. I found out the bingo dauber's I bought at the dollar store got weird because they sat for over a year being unused. Once we got them going again, they worked pretty well. We played about five rounds of bingo with several winners each. I won twice.
We picked up everything and helped Grandma clean her dining room table before people started to leave. Some wanted to go home, and some needed to be somewhere else while they were in town for the weekend. Ben and I had to leave around 4, to get to Puyallup at a decent time. First, I wanted to get a couple of pictures of everyone in front of Grandma's tree but only a few people wanted to partake in the picture taking. I got the most important one done, Grandma, Angela and Mom, then one of Mom and Dad and then Ben and I took a few together.
We thanked Grandma for hosting a nice party and Ben and I got in the Escape and drove the back way through McKenna, Roy and Spanaway to Puyallup. We figured it would be easier to go this way than to try and get onto the freeways with the traffic. We did manage to meander our way through the side roads and eventually got to Meridian. There was a backup at the light, but we did finally make it to the Ram. The entire ride took us about an hour and fifteen minutes.
We let Trish know where we were, and she said that they were inside, and they had to wait another half hour to be seated. Ben found a parking spot, we grabbed Ed's present and our masks and headed on in. They were all there in the lobby waiting to be seated. Basically, Ed's entire family was there, and it was hard to remember who was who because there were like 15 people to keep track of...and that wasn't even all of them! Some of them decided not to come due to personal reasons. We stood next to Trish and Amy and chatted with them for a few minutes. I noticed that Trish and I wrapped our presents in the same gift wrap, which we both got from the dollar store. We giggled about it.
We were finally seated and taken to one of the back banquet rooms. We found seats and got settled in. I had a hard time deciding if I was hungry enough to order something or just like an appetizer or maybe dessert? I wasn't sure. I did order some cider and eventually gave in to ordering a Caeser salad. Ben got a Butthead Ale and pretzel balls with cheese. We ate, chatted with the people around us and annoyed Amy until she hit Ben with her menu. We tried to convince her that her non-alcoholic drink she ordered had alcohol in it.
It was weird getting to know Ed's family. They were so different than I thought they would be different from how he described them. He's got like nine grandchildren but not all of them were there. The ones that were there, the little ones, were pretty rambunctious. It was time for Ed to open his presents and he liked every single one of them including my Mariner's shirt we found for him. We were there for about two hours. We thanked Ed for the invite and chatted with Trish for a little while. She and Amy were going to head to the mall afterwards. We told her we were as well.
We left the Ram and drove across the street to the mall. We found a place to park, the place was sure busy, and went into Dick's. Amy had to find a Kraken sweatshirt for her Christmas person which happened to be my Mom. They were not successful and headed home. Meanwhile, Ben and I went to the Hallmark Store to find our 2021 ornament. There wasn't much to choose from, so we had to just pick one. I had some extra cash on me, so I bought a Cougar one to add to my collection.
We walked through the mall just for fun and ended up at Target. Ben used the restroom really quick and then we headed out back home. Traffic was minimal so it didn't take us long to get home via 512 to I-5. We rolled into our driveway around 8:45. Of course we stayed up way too late watching TV and Ben playing his video games.
This month will just keep getting busier and busier.
Next Adventure: Figgy Does OMD Yet Again...At Home, Teleworking, Again
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