What Now

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING: CHRISTMAS EDITION

1) We had a wonderful Christmas, thanks for asking! It was busy, busy, busy. Our Christmases always begin with Steve's birthday on the 23rd, where we go to Mr. Lee's house and have dinner with him and Grandma. Dinner was delicious, as usual, and we also got to have some of Grandma's dried apple cake. OMG, it's good. If I thought I could get her to write down the recipe instead of trying to just tell it to me, I'd make it for you sometime. It is what fruitcake dreams it could be! :)

2) Christmas Eve was nice and mellow for us this year. We didn't have much to do in the morning except for getting a few last minute things wrapped up, so we spent our morning playing Lego Star Wars. We're on a mission to finish the game with as many achievements completed as possible. That will probably not make sense to anyone who has never played the games, but it takes a LONG time to do. It's fun, though. :) We were going to have official Christmas dinner with Mr. Lee and Grandma that night, so we packed up our gifts and made one last run to Costco for last minute supplies and one more gift. It was much quieter in there the day before Christmas, so we got in and out pretty fast. Dinner with the Pratts was nice and quiet, and we got to open our gifts. Grandma made out like a bandit! :) I love seeing her face when she opens gifts, because she loves everything she gets. We got her a leopard-print Snuggie, among other things, this year and she was excited about getting to use it! We got a lot of lovely things, but I think my favorite was that Mr. Lee handed me a small bag and said "This is from Rhonda." (That's Steve's late mother, if you don't already know that.) He gave me 5 pairs of absolutely beautiful Native American made earrings that had belonged to her. Since they traveled out west so much, she had a lot of turquoise Native American jewelry, so it meant a lot to me that he passed those down to me. We got all verklempt, but made it through just fine. :) The weather was starting to get freaky, so Steve and I had to leave earlier than we normally would have so that we wouldn't get caught in any bad weather. On our way out, the wind was blowing so hard that it knocked everything out of my hands! Luckily, we found everything before it blew away. Geez, the wind was strong. Luckily we made it home before the rain had started, but the wind rocked my poor car almost to pieces before we got there.

3) Christmas morning was a bit busier than it had any right to be, because I had not wrapped my family's gifts yet. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I hate wrapping gifts. I'm not good at it and it takes forever! However, I sat down and began wrapping things up...until I realized I didn't have any more wrapping paper. Oops. I tend to buy a lot of it every couple of years and just use it till it's gone, but I hadn't bought any for the last two years and apparently the rolls I thought I still had were only small pieces, just big enough to cover the rolls they were on! So, I got creative and wrapped things the best way I could. We found enough non-Christmas paper and tissue paper to finish things up. I guess I should be glad most of the gifts we bought were small! :) So, after that I invented a holiday snack that included ham, so as to get rid of even more of the ham we still had, and we went to my mom's house. Once we got there, my mother's husband's family had already arrived, so we sat around, ate hugely of the snacks my mom had made, and talked until my sister and her family got there. We had a lovely (and loud, don't forget loud) day with my family. We laughed a lot and it was good to see my mom. I don't see her as much as I would like, but since she lives in another county, we are not out that way very much. We had a lot of fun! I also got to save Steve the hassle of working on electronics (which he doesn't like to do when he's on a social, family visit) and act as First Tier I.T. for my nephew and brother-in-law because they couldn't figure out how to get a PSP Go (?) working and loaded with programs. I R.T.F.M. and got the game loaded. Now my nephew thinks I'm "technological." I told him that his dad was just having an I.D.10.T issue with the computer, so it wasn't any big deal. :) *evil grin* When we left my mother's house, we went back to Mr. Lee's so that we could open our stockings and watch the terrible, terrible movies that Steve and Grandma insist on seeing every year. Fortunately, for me at least, there was a problem with Steve's DVD, so we only had to suffer through about an hour of "Babes in Toyland" and didn't have to see "Christmas Comes to Willow Creek" (patooie) at all! Huzzah! I ignored that hour by making a hat, so it wasn't time wasted, at least. :) We finished the evening by watching the old version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles." All in all, it was a great day.

4) I hope everyone out there had a great holiday! If you couldn't have a great one, I at least hope you had a good one with something nice to remember about this year. I know it isn't always easy for everyone during this time of year, but as long as you can try and forget your troubles and problems with family and/or friends for one day, it can't be all bad, right? Right? No, seriously, someone tell me I'm right or all of my good, post-holiday feelings are going to implode... :)

5) I have other things to talk about, but I'll leave that for later. It's after 9:30 and no one else in my office has shown up. You know what that means, right? NO PANTS MONDAY! WOOOO! I've got to get started on that! :)