Rose Colored Opposite Day

This will be our first Christmas alone, no children, no family, just us two.  Our first Christmas we spent the day with TH's family, his sister, brother and his family and the parents.  The next time Christmas rolled around we had Eldest, he was 18 days old.  TH and I were both so tired that it was hard to get enthused about the holiday.  What excited TH the most was that his grandmother came for a visit, a rare occurrence.

As the years spooled by, and our family grew every few years, the holidays began to be held at our home, so no travel but much much more work.  But it was enjoyable, the run up to Christmas, tiring but exciting!  The list of "must haves" for dinner kept growing until it took nearly 3 full days of cooking to get everything everyone desired to eat on the table.

We don't have the funds to travel back to Alaska, sigh, it was a pinch to send the boys and their wives small gift cards.  And so the Great Holiday Discussion began.  It had to be both different and cheap.

We could pack a lunch and head out to a park!  Wander about and then find a great scenic spot to enjoy a nice lunch.  So, TH gets on the phone, and all parks are closed for the holidays.  Which really when one thinks about is awesome for the employees.

Go to the movies?  In some weird sense it felt rather lonely to us, so that was quickly discarded.

How about having an anti-holiday?  Let's not do anything that is sorta kinda even remotely Christmas-y.  No decorating, as all our tree trimming items are up in Alaska.  Only send out a few cards, which I need to do tomorrow......  No pies, cookies, hams, prime ribs, etc.  If it's traditional for us, then its out the door this year.

Our tentative plan is to head over to the video rental store a few days before Christmas Eve, and rent an entire raft of movies.  I would like to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" which is one of my all time favorite movies, but one can't get a much more iconic Christmas film.  We can't decide between trilogies, or stand alone movies.  In the running for the trilogy column is X-men, Back to the Future, Iron-man/Avengers.   If we do single movies the category is wide open.  If you have any movie suggestions, pass 'em along as none of our movie choices are cast in concrete.

Dinner will be hamburgers, baked beans, ruffled chips with ice cream and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.   Ok, technically a chocolate chip cookie is a, umm well, cookie, yes I know that.  But its not a holiday cookie, so thats how it slips thru the anti-holiday food barrier.  Buy TH some killer great root beer, and some grapefruit soda for me.  Stock up on ice, and junky foods, make sure we are well stocked for burger trimmings and the food angle is covered. 

I brought a few of our favorite board games from home, so if our eyes and minds get tired of watching movies, we can laugh like crazy beings while we play Yahtzee, or Parcheesi, or a card game.  I'm not sure what alchemy occurs when we play board games, but we usually end up laughing ourselves sick.  The last time we played Parcheesi, we laughed so long and hard when we finally calmed down we had forgotten whose turn it was! 

There you have it, our plans for our first annual Rose Colored Opposite Day!