Family meets before a trek to cousins' house for dinner and great good time

Here are my grandsons, Ethan and Jamal, with their Mom Ronda and Dad Chad. Ethan is showing off his neat Xmas gun, of course.
Dante, below, took his usual striking photo, but his dad Dan frowned, so that is what he will get.



Here I am last of all in my Xmas finery. After we exchanged gifts to my house we drove out to Linda's son Tano's place where he, and his wife Debbie, and his sister Carissa served an Italian dinner: meatballs and sauce cooked the old fashioned Italian way learned from a Sicilian grandmother, green salad, rolls, and baked ham, and all kinds of great desserts, including cheesecake with a raspberry sauce. I brought a serving of that and some fudge home to Doc as well as the dinner complete with meatballs. These guys are very generous with the take home meals. Everyone went home with something. Linda's other son Scott had come in from Los Angeles, but my son Raymond stayed in Los Angeles and he said went to a diner for a hot turkey sandwich. We talked to him on the way home. All the kids played and played. Carissa and Rich have two, Jed and Clarke, and Tano and Debbie two, Gianna and Sammy, who are all the best of friends. We always have a lot of laughs out to Tano's. Linda still did not feel up up to par but she was there to enjoy visiting with her daughter and family from SF. We could not have had a better time. I was sorry my son Gary missed it. Oh, yes we exchanged more books. I brought 3 home from my niece Carissa who passes out books by the armful.
Doc was pleased to be included in the festivities with some of the feast. He stayed home and burned DVDs of the karaoke singing, which we decided was quite funny. Some lucky elatives are going to get a DVD, I decided, who might be able to tolerate it, and friends. This is Doc's life now days, I don't know what he would do if he could not make videos. He was in pretty good form last night, so he was happy. Some of the guys in the family are worried about jobs, but that seemed to make the Christmas joys all the sweeter. Time to worry later about all the jobs lost or might be lost or cut back. A wonderful day!