My Christmas 2008

Phew. Finally have time to sit down and catch my breath after all the christmas related activities over the past few days. So far things have been good. There's one more holiday related gathering coming up on Saturday so there's still some more holiday left for me to go through.

Things started off on Christmas Eve for my family. Because my sister does stuff Christmas morning with her in-laws, we've started doing our main Christmas celebrations the day before to make scheduling a lot easier. I went over to my parents house early to help with the food preparation. Lots of vegetable slicing for salads and stuff like that. That caused the 3 hours before the rest of the family arrived to go pretty quickly.

Once my sister and her husband arrived, we did the gift exchange. I received a bunch of new penguin-y stuff from my parents including a set of penguin mugs that will be excellent for tea, as well as an embroidered penguin towel that my mom made (and was given to me by the dog…because she thought that I would need a towel to clean up with after she licks my hands whenever I come over). Other highlights include a swiffer wet jet (You seriously don't realize how much you appreciate these things until you move out), a hand mixer (because I borrowed one from them a while back) and a bunch of stuff for my 360 (extra controller, some battery packs, and Guitar Hero: World Tour guitar pack).

My parents dog enjoys stealing my dad's socks and shoe laces so my mom wrapped up a bunch of socks individually and included inside each package a pair of shoe laces to give to my dad, labeled as coming from the dog. So he was having fun matching individual socks to each other and pulling out shoe laces. Also, one of his gifts hadn't arrived yet, so my mom took an empty bag closed it up with as many clips as she could stick on there (so the air wouldn't escape) and gave that to him. Hopefully that one gets here today, but the way she did it was funny.

After the present opening, we played a little Wii. Specifically a Mini Golf game that my sister opened earlier that day. The best part of the game is going to be totally impossible to reproduce through text. But it had the most over exagurated announcer guy ( "PLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAEEEERRRRR OOOOOOONNNNNNEEEE… CHOOSE YOUR GOOOOOOLLLLLFFFFFEEEEERRRRR!!!!!") and the courses were very strange, but it was fun playing through them. After that the family sat down and watched a couple episodes of a TV series that my sister also opened earlier.

Meanwhile I headed to the kitchen to start making the macaroni and cheese for later. It was the first time I made it for other people, so I was a little nervous as to how it would end up turning out. But, as it happens, it seemed to have gone over great, and my mom appreciated having some time to sit down after running around all day. So that's a good thing too.

Once that was all done, some of the members of the extended family arrived for dinner and cards. Because my grandma is getting a little older and doubly because she just had some minor surgery, we didn't have the traditional gathering at her house on Christmas Eve this year. Instead the family kinda broke up into smaller groups at various houses and we're planning on doing a family reunion sort of deal sometime in the summer. So Mike, Stacy and Elizbeth (uncle, aunt and cousin respectively) ended up coming over to our place. That was a fun evening.

Christmas Day was a bit lower key in comparison. Like last year, my grandparents were going to come out to my parent's house for an early dinner and talking. I arrived early again to learn how my mom makes her lasagna for future usage myself. It seemed like after all the activity the day before, their dog was totally tired out and very sleepy. So I ended up carrying the dog around for a while and letting her sleep on me. My grandparents arrived on schedule and the afternoon went pretty well I thought. As is tradition, throughought the day we were watching bits and pieces of the A Christmas Story marathon on TBS.

Oh, another thing that should be mentioned. Thursday morning I was going to go play with my toys but, I ran into that eternal delima of Christmas day…Batteries not included!!! Of course the toy was my swiffer wet jet, but it's still the same general problem! The more things change, the more they stay the same and all that. I just thought it was kinda funny.

So, so far, so good as far as holiday stuff goes. Today is a little breather between family activites. I'll be home most of the day (although I might go out shopping just a little bit later as there's some stuff I need) but later I'll be headed over to my friends place for some Guitar Hero-ing, pizza and general hanging out.    

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