Taboo and Family Holidays

As a final post for 2006, here's a look into a Midnight Shoveler Christmas.
I love going home to my family for the holidays. We usually play Scrabble, make inside jokes, and complain about being loved too much, therefore getting overspoiled in number of presents (I've never seen the point in this last one.) This year we even sang songs as I played piano. No joke. First, Hark the Herald Angels, and then we moved on to Pocahontas and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but it was family singalong nonetheless! We also read The Little Match Girl on Christmas Eve (a spoiler: it doesn't end well- Hans Christian Anderson ends the delightful Christmas tale of a poor Russian street urchin with the words frozen and corpse.).
But the best part of this nontechnological time at home was playing the 2-person version of Taboo. It's the game where you see a word on your card like 'Elephant' and you have to make your teammate (my sister, the only other player in our version) guess the word 'elephant', without using gestures or motions. The tricky part is that you're NOT allowed to use certain words, also on your card, which would usually be used in describing an elephant (say, 'Africa', or 'tusks'). But our sibling bond is often stronger than words. Our dialogue went like this:
"Napoleon Dynamite's favorite thing, not a liger, is..."
"Numchucks?"
"No."
"Ninjas?"
"No."
"Unicorns?"
"Yes!!!"

"Hawaii."
"Hives?"
"Yesssss!"

And my personal favorite:
"____-beaters."
"Wife?"
"No. Egg. Eggbeaters."

Happy New Year, all, and thanks for reading. See you in '07!