Merry crop-tops, I guess?

Normally, the others do not wish to be woken up earlier than they would on their own, even on Christmas morning. Yesterday, Mom sent me up to fetch a couple of antibiotic cells for Dad, and Emily and Maris both turned out to be already awake. Wished Brian and Marie a merry Christmas, and they both woke up while I went on to refill the humidifiers.

(For context, along with "Merry Popotan" (from a mailbox sign in Popotan itself), "Merry Melodies" is one of my joke variations of "Merry Christmas", with another being "Mary Kris misses you!" I remember wondering subconsciously when I was little, if there was any connection between "Merry Christmas" and the cartoon short series Merrie Melodies, not noticing the spelling difference at the time. (I do gather "merrie" to be an archaic spelling of "merry", but who even uses the word outside of such fixed phrases as "Merry Christmas", "be on your merry way", or "eat, drink, and be merry"?))

Back downstairs, Aunt Marie had woken up, and I meant to wish her merry melodies, but a saliva bubble formed at my lips and caused me to pronounce a "B" instead of the second "M". She asked if I had just said "merry bellies", and commented that we'll sure have some merry bellies when we have breakfast after exchanging gifts.

After having missed so many opportunities to break them out since I bought them, I had planned to bring those bags of popcorn down to share around while we open presents, and actually did remember before we got started. Mom, however, suggested I simply place them behind the tree, where a never-wrapped tray of Ferrero Rocher was already leaning against something, and while Maris did bring the bag of cheddar-flavored over to us, we never did find a good time to actually share it around.

We all got all kinds of things this year, but most notably, I got those two volumes of Tokyo Mew Mew that I had asked for, and managed to read two chapters throughout the day.

During breakfast, I offered to show her, along with Emily and Maris, some merry bellies. (What a coincidence it is, what I had already just shown Brian and Marie two episodes so far of.)

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Brian, Emily, and Maris eventually went to the Maloneys', but I did manage to show Marie and Aunt Marie episode 3. (And for good measure, it just so happens that I never bothered to change my laptop wallpaper from two years ago, despite having written Madoka off months later, given how rarely I normally use my laptop itself.)

(Was initially going to replay episode 1, but Marie just wanted to keep it going. Only helps how much easier both episodes we already saw are to summarize for Aunt Marie than four episodes of Kanon.)

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For dessert, I presented everyone with a platter of some peppermint bark that Mom and I took then to actually break into pieces, as my gift to everyone this year. (That's what Mom and I were doing when the others drove Drew to the airport. We did that with the remaining halves of a pack each of chocolate and vanilla melting squares that I had secretly bought months ago as a snack; easy to smuggle home that day in turn, since I was riding a bus, but she eventually spotted them anyway. Bark in particular was what I decided upon, after seeing my favorite flavor from that plastic platter specified as creme de menthe, which actually turns out to be some kind of alcoholic beverage despite being the same flavor used in the non-alcoholic Andes mints.)

And since Marie asked about the general steps involved, here is the actual recipe Mom and I used (which does not specify actual mint liqueur, although we did not use food coloring either):

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/mint-chocolate-swirl-bark/