Jen and I are hitching up the sled dogs and heading north into the wilderness for a belated Christmas with the Dugans this weekend. This is exciting for a couple of reasons—we haven’t seen them since Thanksgiving, it’s freakin’ Christmas, and this means we get to finally put all the boxes back in the basement.

Christmas with the Dugans is something I don’t think my wife is quite used to yet. My family tends to go nuts on the present shopping for each other, to the point where it becomes kind of obscene. Not that I’m complaining, though—the thrill of the sucessful hunt is the real payoff, and we love to surprise each other (my family has a certain way of listening to you talk in April about that thing you’d like to have, or making a list of odd household items you don’t currently own but could really use, and then surprising the crap out of you with them in December.) We also like to stretch the process out into a five-hour afternoon, complete with breakfast, champagne, and cookies—something speed-openers just can’t understand.

I always look forward to the holidays up north because I don’t see a lot of my family during the year, and it always makes me happy to see them. I think this year will be bittersweet for various reasons, but it’s been good to have something to look forward to after the “real” Christmas season ended.