Immediately after the Christmas Eve service, we surprised our friends the Nielsen’s by stopping over at their house with some cookies. It was an impromptu get-together ending in a Karaoke fest. Apparently Karen loves Karaoke and was once at Costco entertaining the crowd for an hour and a half, getting them all involved! I could totally see her doing that.
So the hamminess factor came out greatly as Albert, Karen, and Glen all have a very fun streak to them. (Me, not so much. I tried to wiggle out and only got roped into doing one song.) It was terribly funny. I kept laughing at their antics, so much so that I started crying and once fell off the sofa!
Glen and Albert did an outstanding rendition of “Lean on Me,” complete with motions.
It was unchoreographed but they both seemed to know what to do at the same time.
Then Albert and Karen hammed it up with a rendition of “I Write the Songs.” I never heard of it before (since I was raised in a classical-music only household) but apparently it is very famous.
We ended with a rousing finale of New York, New York.
After that, we went home. I was totally worn out from laughing so much. So great to have such fun friends!
The next day we got up and drove down to the Bay Area to have Christmas lunch with my mom. A big feast, as usual! She is a great cook!
And then we went to visit Albert’s family and stayed there overnight, hanging out with family and eating one big meal after another.
The trip culminated with a music concert by all the kids. Megan and her cousin Noah practiced a duet all afternoon and pretty much performed a big part of it by evening. Quite amazing, since it requires pretty strong sight-reading skills!
So it was a somewhat irregular Christmas, as usually the tradition is for everyone to come to our house. But it was nice to see family and we have yet to celebrate with my sister Corrie, so we are doing that later this week!
