Christmas Eve Eve

There are many advantages to spending the holidays with family: the love, the joy, the traditions, the drunkeness. But there are also advantages to staying home -- just the two of you -- for the holidays:

• No travel stress.
• No crowded house with the heat turned up WAY too high while you roast in your sweater and fight the oncoming headache.
• No guilt-eating of the holiday cookies and candies that your mother-in-law made. Just. For. You.
• No decisions about whose family you spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with -- thus, no guilt about shorting someone on time with you.
• No sleeping on the tiny bed your husband had when he was in high school, and now you, he, and the dog are all jammed in there.
• No worries that your dog will crap in a strange bathroom and then smear it all over the place because you left him alone in a strange house while you went out for beers to catch up with friends.

Plus:

• Instead of spending last night at your grandparents' house eating the 7 layer Jell-O, you and your husband spent the evening at a relaxing wine bar where you both sampled lots of wine, ordered a cheese and olive platter, and played two games of chess.
• You got to spend yesterday afternoon watching "The Simpson's Movie" and episodes of "Deadwood" instead of trapped in the kitchen explaining to your mother that it's your business that you never took your husband's last name.
• You get to sleep in this morning intead of waking to the pounding of children's running overhead at 7 am.
• You got to prepare a big breakfast with your husband, in your own kitchen, in temperate FL (with the windows open and a nice breeze), this morning instead of sitting down to a big breakfast in a kitchen 2,000 miles away and freezing temps outside.
• You get to go to a matinee this afternoon instead of attending yet another gift opening at yet another grandparent's house.

Ahhh, it's so relaxing to stay in FL for the holidays!