I always look forward to Festibond, and the preparations add to my excitement. My sisters and I baked goodies with mom, and we all spent time writing thoughtful letters to each other. I used the thesaurus a lot for my letters, not wanting to use many boring and overused words. I discovered some new words such as “hankering” and “gratify.” I enjoyed expanding my vocabulary while writing my letters.

Family Photo for Festibond of 2011

It’s been five years since we stopped celebrating Christmas and made up our own tradition: Festibond. While our Festibond activies have evolved over the years–we didn’t give each other gifts this year–we have kept true to the intent: maximize family bonds through quality time, letters of affection and lots of hugs. Festibond 2011 has been all that and more.

Yesterday morning we started Festibond at Cracker Barrel in South Portland. It was less than awesome, but we enjoyed being together. After breakfast I finished writing my letter to Kirsten while she and the girls made final preparations of the bounty of tasty snacks.

Skye and Kirsten share a hug

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Yesterday was Festibond. Festibond is a tradition where the family gets together to play games, read letters to each other, and have a big family breakfast.

First we went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. I got the cinnamon streusel. We had a lot of plates but our table was small, it was loud, and some of the food was disgusting. We decided not to go there next year for Festibond.

Breakfast at Cracker Barrel

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Yesterday we had Festibond. For breakfast we went to Eggspectations. I had bacon and scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese on top. It was delicious.

We came back late so we didn’t have lunch. We gathered our presents and started reading letters and giving presents to each person. Dad said our present is coming late; Mom said they are giving us a microscope. When we went shopping on Friday, Mom and I stopped to look at a microscope. Mom told me, “We will get one of those for you girls someday.”

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Festibond is our family tradition that we invented last year. I love it. It is wonderful to see the girls thinking and caring about others, and being excited to spend time together as a family.

We went to breakfast at our favorite breakfast place, Eggspectation. It the past the girls always ordered chocolate chip pancakes, but Skye’s and Jenna’s tastes have matured to scrambled eggs and some form of pork. Despite the many beverage choices of milk, chocolate milk, hot chocolate, and various juices, the girls all ordered water to drink. As Hayley would say, “water’s healfy.”

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Festibond is the gift of spending time with each other.

Yesterday was Festibond. We went to Eggspectations for breakfast. Jenna and I solved the crossword puzzle on our place mats. It took a long time. I figured out the whole thing except for one. To get that one I had to refer to the answers on the back. I ordered a water with oranges, scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, sausage links and breakfast fries. It was delicious.

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This is me when I ate my chocolate chip pancakes

This Festibond we went to Eggspectations for breakfast. The thing I ate for breakfast at Eggspectations is chocolate chip pancakes.

My favorite present from Festibond is a microscope. One other thing I like about opening presents is when we read the letters that say nice things about us.

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Since it’s getting to be Festibond we did a little bit of Festibond stuff at school. We got to put designs on our antlers. We took one long piece of lined paper. Then we traced our hands and cut them out of brown paper. Mrs. Arnold put our name on the paper after we put our designs on it. The first sticker was Santa. The next sticker was a candy cane. The next sticker was a reindeer. The last sticker is holly.

The way to make a circle to put it on our head is first to put the paper around our head then carefully take it off while it was connected still. Then we stapled it. Then we stapled the antlers. And then we got to put them on for the whole time we were in school.

Hayley

Ok, so we didn’t watch the parade and we didn’t put together a jigsaw puzzle.  And I cooked a modest traditional Thanksgiving feast…without the stuffing.  What can I say, I was craving the after-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches and looking forward to the other usual leftovers we could eat for the entire next week.  I admit that since I’ve been busy with school and work, I’ve kind of missed cooking.  But mostly, I wanted to have the opportunity to spend quality time with each of the girls and have them cook with me.

Hayley loves corn and asked to help me with the corn casserole.  She enjoyed chopping the onion with the food chopper until it made her “cry.”  She also helped me make the pumpkin pie filling.  I invited Jenna to help me make the potato-chive monkey bread rolls.  She was fascinated when she saw how the dough had risen and I explained to her the process.  Skye helped me with the pie crust and the mashed potatoes, which is a favorite of hers.

Hayley asked me last week whether we were going to shoot a turkey, buy a turkey, or just have chicken.  She loves chicken.  According to her, however, turkey does NOT taste just like chicken as I told her.  Turkey is “kind of good and kind of gross.”  The girls were a bit disgusted at first by the uncooked bird, especially when I animated it for them.  Then they were intrigued by it and Skye wondered where all the organs were.  She had studied the body systems last year in school.  They were not particularly excited about eating the gravy when they discovered it actually came from the turkey drippings.

We all sat together in the evening to play Uno H2O.  It’s the waterproof Uno card game.  I don’t know why we purchased waterproof cards.  Perhaps we could use them at the beach or the pool.  All the girls were quick to understand the game and had no trouble playing independently.  They got a little competitive, but there were no tears.  Everyone really seemed to have a good time.  I think it was a great day spent together.

I like St. Patrick’s Day because it’s a time to drink beer, pinch people and have a parade. I don’t like most holidays because they’re all about food and getting stuff. Aren’t we fat enough already? And don’t we have enough crap stuffed inside our about-to-be-foreclosed McMansions?

Seriously, the traditions of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Valentine’s Day and wedding anniversaries are for stupid people and invented by marketers. I’d rather not.

Does that make me a curmudgeon? Getting together with family is wonderful. So is football. But I could do without the feast.