In sickness and in health?

One word to describe our Christmas: Margaritaville.

Christmas season for us is always a marathon of visiting different sides of the family. It started last Saturday and won't end until this coming Saturday. But it was nice this year, we had things under control, got to places on time, had a good time. The actual Christmas day we got up and did the stockings. We've sort of developed a little tradition of just giving Jacob a few small things in his stocking. He's really happy with this and gets plenty of stuff from the other people with less restraint. Zach and I also get a little something for each other now so that Jacob can have something to give as well. We never used to get gifts for each other, but it's nice for Jacob to experience the reciprocity, so I guess that'll be a new little tradition too.

By the way - we don't do Santa. Jacob 'knows who he is', even sat on his lap at the mall, but as far as we're concerned he's just a jolly guy who hangs around to spread holiday cheer, but Mom and Dad are the ones filling the stocking. I still haven't figured out how to explain this lifestyle choice to relatives and well-meaning strangers without them feeling as if I've personally offended them...

Anyway, back to actual Christmas - Zach discovered three inches of standing water in the new part of the basement after we did the stockings. He stayed here to clean up the mess and sort out what was salvageable while I ushered Jacob out of the house as quickly as possible before he had a chance to learn some nice new vocabulary from an unhappy Zach. We spent the first half of the day at my mom's. My uncle and his wife were in town and had brought some heavy duty margarita mix. I stuck with my once-a-week glass of wine, but when Zach came along he hit the margaritas. He usually sticks with beer and is not a hard liquor kind of guy so he basically had no chance.

A couple hours later it took me and my back up (Mom and Jamie) to get Zach out of the house and into the front seat of the car. We hadn't gotten halfway down the road before he started throwing up all over the front of the car. The best part about that was that my bag was sitting at his feet and the time he leaned over and puked, it went right in with my wallet, journal, book, etc. Fun. We stopped at home before Round Two (dessert) at my sister's in order to take care of the animals and by then, get Zach some new clothes. He obviously wasn't going to get anything out of going to my sister's, but it was one of those times where you're afraid to leave the drunk person alone, lest they kill themselves, or burn the house down.

Zach never made it back out of the house. And I'll leave his part of the story at that.

Jacob and I finally made it to my sister's house and had a good time. My relatives all enjoyed laughing about Zach and planning how they'd make fun of him next time they see him. I told Zach later that he's lucky I have such a light-hearted and humor-inclined family. Everyone had a good time talking about their own drunk stories. One uncle told of the dangerous combination of shrimp and gin, and how it ended in the backyard of his girlfriend's house. Another uncle got blasted on a booze cruise, which involved him falling in a bush and peeing himself. Someone else told me about the time my father puked his way across the Canadian border and how his father-in-law (my grandfather) teased him about it afterward. Ahh...everyone loves a good drunk story.

All the while that I was cleaning up puke, doing extra laundry, kicking Zach to make sure he was still alive, I was thinking so highly of myself...thinking what I could milk out of this one...thinking maybe I could finally get that new camera lens. Then I finally came around to realizing that I did take marriage vows, that in less than six months I'll be having a baby and possibly be more incapacitated than Zach was last night...and that maybe this is all part of the job.