Ahhhh, Christmas week is upon us.  Already.  We’ve managed our share of celebrating too.  Heck, I’d go so far as to say I am looking forward to Christmas this year.  I’ve definitely been to more holiday parties than usual.  For instance, Thursday night we headed down to the Brooksider for the annual Christmas Caroling event.  Several of the “regular patrons” there go out singing every year, always starting (and ending) the event at the Brooksider.  They hit a packed house too this year for whatever reason, there wasn’t an empty table in the place.

Friday evening was the “official” annual Christmas party at the Brooksider, so we headed down there again.  As usual for this party, it was over-crowded, loud, and nearly annoying.  Free food will do that I guess.  Luckily for me they fired up the heaters on the back porch, so me and a few other guys retreated out there for the evening.

Saturday was, for the most part, spent on the couch watching basketball.  Several entertaining games on, even if they didn’t all come out quite as I wanted.  Around 5:00, we wandered down to the Brooksider of all places.  Our friend Brooke was in town, so she and several friends met up with us down there.  We stayed for quite a while too, later than usual for us old folks. After a while she and her merry band of youngsters headed out on the town.  We, on the other hand, did not.

Sunday we expanded our horizons a bit.  No trips to the Brooksider, whew.  Instead, we went to O’Dowds and watched the Chiefs game.  You really can’t beat the ol’ Brooksider for watching TV, but O’Dowds was certainly a serviceable alternative, and much less crowded.  There was another contributing factor too:  They are in the KC Hopps group of restaurants, and they were running a special Christmas deal where we got $10 off our meal and 100 bonus “points.”  The points are something of a running joke with us.  We like to accumulate them, and if they come out with a deal like that where you get extra points we will show up every time.  But, we never actually use them, just keep building them up.  Who knows, some day we may cash them in and throw a party or something.  At any rate, we had a quite tasty lunch and loaded up our card with yet more points!