Garrity Christmas Gathering

Each year my family gets together a couple of weeks prior to Christmas to visit and talk and get competitive. The competitions vary from year to year. Sometimes we play actual games, but most of them got suspended because of the various methods of cheating that were employed. My father, for instance, once spent an entire round of Facts in Five writing obscure answers that required us to either call correct or look them ALL up in an encyclopedia, where they usually turned out to be correct anyway.

And don't even get me started on all the posturing that occurs during a game of Trivial Pursuit.

So in recent years we've turned to other competitions such as whose luggage was the most lost on international flights or who had the most frequent flyer miles or who spent the least time in London before jetting back to America.

This year everyone started speaking Latin phrases.

Seriously.

Latin.

Needless to say I never win these competitions. My luggage showed up on my one international flight and the only turbulance I ever experience is when Rob drives too fast over a pothole. And pretty much after saying Christ Have Mercy, Lord Have Mercy (remembered from when the Catholic Mass was in Latin -- yes, I am old enough to remember) my knowlege of Latin is sorely lacking. (Because no matter how hard my mother and a fellow school board member tried, she could not get Latin taught in the Somers School district.)

But the food is always good. And it's always fun to see my big, articulate, competitive family. Now you can see them, too. This is the whole gang. My parents are the bookends on the couch, with their grandchildren (except for Brenna who is in my brother TA's arms), and then the rest of us behind them, five children and four spouses:

Here are all the grandchildren. The funniest part of this photo was all the adults behind my camera, trying to make Brenna smile.

My Aunt Brenda sent me a lot of her jewelry that we were supposed to divvy up when we were in the Poconos this summer. I couldn't find it then, so we did the choosing at the Christmas party. We all came away with several pairs of earrings or pins or loose gemstones (I took most of those!):Here a nice picture of my brother TA and sister-in-law Ann. Hannah thinks Aunt Ann looks like Brooke Shields:My sister Terry was the chef for the day:Oh and here's another tradition, started by my sister Aunt Anonymous (you'll see a picture of her in a minute). We always open Christmas crackers, which is why you'll see some of these subsequent photos of us wearing silly paper hats. Here, Hannah and Liz try to figure out what the prizes in the crackers were:

Oh, and while we're looking at twins, here's the ORIGINAL model, my brother TA, and sister Tina:Here are the silly hats inside the Christmas Crackers (Lizzie's prize was a toy dinosaur):It's always lovely to have a toddler around for a Christmas party. Here's Brenna contemplating the candy canes offered by Mrs. Claus:And pointing out a couple of the zillions of penguins Terry has all over her house:Tommy telling Grandma something very important (or speaking Latin ... I can't remember which!):Then Tommy moved on to tell his story to Aunt Anonymous: And this would be Uncle Anonymous:Lizzie has this thing lately about scaring people. I don't know why, but she loves to hide and jump out and yell BOO ... which is hazardous to my health most days since she's very good at here. Here I caught her getting into position to scare someone:Here's Aunt Anonymous in conversation with Hannah and Lizzie (who by the way insisted on wearing these sweaters even though it was not cold in Terry's house, nor did they match their Christmas outfits -- six year olds have very strong opinions!):Grandma and T.A. I just like this picture:I love the expressions in this photo. Tommy is attempting to become a member of the Bentley family and (horrors!) an Eagles fan:Ray and Rob. I'm going out on a limb and guessing they were talking about computers or cars. Probably cars:Snickerdoodles are a family favorite, as you can tell from Hannah's face:We also celebrate my dad's birthday. Terry couldn't fit all 78 candles on the cake due to fire restrictions, but here he is blowing out the seven she did put on the cake: