The Christmas Story Part 1

PREFACE

Last spring ('08), Frosty attended two family events: the christening of one of his young cousins and his uncle's wedding. When he first mentioned the festivities, I made some not-so-subtle offers to go along as his date, which were met with equally non-subtle rejections of my offers. Having already met and bonded with C. Dub (a.k.a. Frosty's mama), I felt that meeting the rest of his family (a.k.a. the Wolff Pack) was the next logical step. It didn't exactly hurt my feelings that he didn't want me to escort him to the christening or the wedding, but an eensy weensy part of my brain was convinced that my exclusion from the events must have been based on some horrible personality failure on my part. Because really...I'm insecure like that. So I basically just dropped the whole family introduction thing.

As the year began wrapping up and the time for holiday planning rolled around (ummm...like mid-November). I started to inquire about Frosty's Christmas plans, suggesting how much fun it would be if we spent the holidays together. I even tipped off C. Dub about the possibility of the two of them spending Christmas with me in Hamburg, which she seemed to really like.

In the end, however, the decision was up to Frosty and he chose to spend Christmas at his grandparents' house in the little town of Annerod (which is about 3.5 miles east of the next biggest city called Giessen, which itself is about 40 miles north of the large German city of Frankfurt -- in case you need some sort of geographical bearings). This time, Frosty invited me to come along.