Pics will be up soon, probably this weekend.
11 people including myself. My older half-brother and his wife and 2 boys. Some very good friends and their 3 kids. My younger brother Matt (the one "trying" to get reinstated). Matt brought his guitar (very high dollar) and his Korg keyboard ($2500) and the moms made sure the kids were careful around them.
Joel and his family arrived a little early (my older half-brother) while I was still cooking. Tina (s.i.l.) was going nuts just standing there watching me cook so I put her to work on the cheese manicotti and the focaccia bread, both of which turned out stupendously. There was a big platter of cold cuts, Ritz crackers, and raw oysters. Linguine and Fettucini. I cooked the scallops, clam sauce, and shrimp scampi. My 10yo nephew Levi went nuts over the scallops and shrimp scampi. Tina finally barred him from the kitchen cause he was sampling a little too much. Also made a big pot of crawfish, which my youngest nephew Benjamin (5) absolutely loves. And I had bought 2 pounds of prawns, which Joel kept referring to as "them big-ass shrimp". (yeah, he's a redneck all right!)
While I finished cooking the bread and manicotti, we dived into the gifts. Matt had a blast playing Santa and he really got a kick out of watching how fast the kids tore off the wrapping paper. I've got plenty of pics and we joked that they are "blackmail" pics. When Levi and Benjamin opened their Playstation 2, the joke of the pink Barbie gift wrap went right over their heads. Levi's got a real dry sense of humor. But after it was open, Levi held that box almost the entire time they were here. If he wasn't holding it, it was right by his side.
Then came dinner and everyone ranted and raved about the food. Which just made me glow with pride at turning out such a good meal. Then Matt hooked up his guitar and keyboard. Played a few songs for us, even sang the vocals on a couple. Matt's one hell of a musician and composer. That's our little family joke. Three brothers, one's a race car driver, ones a musician, and I'm the boring one. Anyway. Then he let the kids take turns sitting in his lap strumming the guitar while he fingered the chords. That suprised me, how good he is with kids and how they took to him so quickly. We never bothered with anything on TV or a movie, it was all family, gifts, talking, singing (someone brought a Karoke machine), and live music. After I'd gotten enough alcohol in me I even took the mic and sang [very off key] a David Allen Coe song while Matt improv'ed the music. One of the ones from his "underground" albums. Best not to mention which one it was, but needless to say everyone was laughing their asses off.
After everyone left, Matt stayed and we talked for hours. Talked about folks we knew in the dubs. It's amazing how when we grew up together how little we really knew about each other. In fact, there's a couple of girls I chased way back then that he still knows and he promised to tell them I said hi. We talked about him going back. He's not as hard-core about reinstatement as he was a couple of months ago. I unloaded on him in detail about the history of the WT, details about Charles T Russel, Beth Sarim, and the early stuff like Jehovah living in the Pleadies (sp?) and Russel's use of the Great Pyramid to determine the date of 1914. His eyes were big as dinner plates. I told him to go through the KH libraries of old publications and try to find the old old stuff like "Studies in the Scriptures". I also told him about the Nazi letter.
I asked him "Matt, how do you think the GB arrives at a doctrinal decision?". "Oh they pray and Jehovah reveals it to them, I'm sure it's something pretty supernatural". I told him no, they vote and some decisions pass by only a narrow margin.
Then I told him about the U.N. membership, prefacing it by asking "what is the U.N.". "Well the wild beast of course". Then I told him about the membership and how it was quietly ended when information became public. I ended it with the recent Pedophile issue.
Matt left with my copy of Crisis of Conscience and a promise to read it. Last time I offered it, he said "I don't think I should read stuff like that". This time it was "yeah I think I need to check this out".
Well this is my last day off so I'm going to finish it offline. Laying on the couch watching tv and working on a couple of model cars I bought myself for Xmas.
This was the best Christmas I've ever had.
Mike.
Edited by - bendrr on 26 December 2002 19:18:14