Various things, many of which are Christmasy
Christmas The First: The Extended Family (Dec 24)
My Uncle Paul and Aunt Fan, Fan's daughter Lindsay (hereafter referred to by her baby Chinese name MaoMao) and their new baby Sophie came to my grandparents' house for Christmas. Paul and family live in Cincinnati, so Mom doesn't get to see him often. Anyway, for Christmas Eve we went to see them there, and while the grandparents were crazy as usual it was nice to see Paul and family again; I haven't seen them in a couple years. Lindsay got big! It's nearly impossibly to equate her with the little girl doing perfect origami despite not being able to read the Japanese instructions who went by MaoMao. I still don't know why she picked the name Lindsay; personally, I would rather have stayed Roulan. (Roulan is her name, MaoMao is what we called her when she was super little, and Lindsay is the English name she chose now that she's living in the U.S.) What I got wasn't important; it was being with them that mattered.
Christmas The Second: The Boy's House (Dec 25)
I got an Xbox! I knew it was coming, knew he had switched out my 60g hard drive for his 20g and was perfectly okay with that--I'll hardly use the hard drive anyway. Got a 1600 points card, too, and a game disc with five little mostly lame games, including PacMan Championship Edition which is awesome, as far as Pac-Man games go. Also have a thirteen-month Gold LIVE account card, which I'll activate as soon as my free trial is over.
Very interested in the game "n+"; you're a stick-figure-esqe ninja jumping around collecting time pellets, hitting switches,and opening doors. It doesn't sound very interesting but the puzzles are challenging, the multiplayer is ridiculously awesomely difficultly awesome. Will download the free trial if I am still allowed to, and then when I input my monies that's the game I wanna buy, most likely.
Oh, and the boy's brother got me the MOST ADORABLE stuffed warthog. And my kitty pounced on it and carried it around and beat it up all day and it was SO CUTE. It's as big as he is, so it's pretty little. I either don't know or don't like the rest of boy's family, but this particular person is really, really awesome, and not just because he got me a cute stuffed animal.
Christmas The Third: My House
Getting from boy's house to our house in the morning was tough because of all the snow; main roads were still pretty clear, but both our families live off on side streets. Papa's car got stuck just outside our driveway, we had to push. Fun times, but Levi was scared and sad, especially since he was in the carrier and couldn't even try to see what was making all the scary noises. Poor baby.
Boy liked the business card case Momma and I got for him with his business logo and his name on the front. I'm happy cause I was worried he wouldn't.
I got the books I wanted: Havemercy, Once Upon A Time In The North, and How to Ditch Your Fairy. Will almost certainly get The Demon's Lexicon for my birthday if I don't buy it myself the day it comes out. I'll probably buy it myself the day it comes out, I am so ridiculously excited for it.
ALSO GOT OMG. SO there's this incredibly soft squishy material that is all the rage this year as far as blankets, jackets, gloves, etc. goes, and I LOVE IT. It's warm and soft and fuzzy, and I already have my nice big thick grey blanket made out of it. AND GUESS WHAT I GOT FOR CHRISTMAS. I GOT A SHEET SET MADE OUT OF THAT MATERIAL, ENTIRELY. Flat sheet, fitted sheet, and two pillowcases! HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THAT. Only problem is, it's white. I anticipate dying it some other color so that it won't show stains so much.
And received my childhood in book form: When I was eight years old, a game called The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released. My family bought it up almost immediately, and it become my brother's favorite game, and my favorite thing to do was watch him play. When he finally outgrew it to the point where there were a few seconds that it wasn't being used, I started to play it, partially with his help and partially with the help of one particular strategy guide. I didn't know exactly what it was called, who published it, or what the cover looked like--it was missing its covers and a couple of the pages. Over the years it went from being slightly tattered to--well, right now I have two or three rumpled pages carefully tucked away in my bookcase. The rest? Space dust.
Now, on the bottom of these pages, the page numbers were ensconced in a little Triforce symbol, next to the words "The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Perfect Guide." So I searched Amazon, and lo and behold, there was a book with that title! I wasn't a hundred percent sure, since the cover didn't look quite right and it didn't have the Search Inside function that some books do, but I added it to my WishList anyway and I GOT IT. I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT GUYS SERIousLY I AM SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS.
And other stuff, including a HUGE pile of socks. Moving on.
Christmas The Fourth: The Chocolate Fountain (Dec 26)
Spend time with Nessa, Tiesh, Hanners, Becka, boy, and boy's brother, as well as Rockband 2 (which is WAY more fun than I expected; also, "Carry On My Wayward Son" is an AWESOMEAWESOME song!). Fountain worked okay; the cascades weren't unbroken like they were in the pictures, I blame it on his house being not level. But it was tasty and all the treats we had for dipping were tasty and now we have little containers of diabetes scattered across his house. The stovetop marshmallow toaster I'd got from the grandparents turned out to not actually be stovetop and instead require pre-packaged fuel. Sold separately. Guess which items are going to Goodwill soon? Yeah, those.
It was pretty okay to hang out with the friends-type people, but a lot of them are a lot older than me (we range in age from 15 to 22, and I'm the second youngest at 18) and I end up feeling excluded a lot. Nevertheless, the whole day was fun, especially playing co-op n+ with Hanners, boy, and boy's brother.
Today was... tiring, mostly. Woke up too late to go to League, Mom slept in so we didn't get to Powell's, so played some TF2 and some n+ and failed a little with Xbox settings but that's all fixed now. Then rushed to get ready to go to dinner with Paul and had tasty food and and fun times were had by all, except that my chocolate fountain and my marshmallow toaster are still at the boy's house, being large and hard to transport.
Levi missed me the several days I was gone; the only time I've been home since Christmas Eve Eve was for a couple of hours on Christmas. Hasn't done much face sucking but I got a phone call the other day saying that he was sucking on my little brother's lip, which means that a) Levi was desperate and b) Delaney was ridiculously bored.
I still have to run a load of dishes and re-cap the four claws that came uncapped before I can go to bed, and it's 1AM and I'm wasting time making LJ posts. Whinge whinge whinge. Also I am whiny about hd_holidays; I am ridiculously behind and it's making it hard to keep up with rs_500 and hd_500.
So those were my Christmasses. Hope you all had a good holiday! I'll see y'all on the flip side.