Fine, if you're so smart, *you* rig up the lights!
I have informed Dad that I'm too energy-less to handle one more day of Christmas-related activities. To emphasize, Mom came into my room around 8:00 this morning and asked if I wanted to go shopping.
I told her she was crazy and promptly fell back asleep.
Our own Christmas began a bit tense but smoothed itself out after a while. (Mom started the morning by hurriedly separating our boatload of homemade cookies into gift bags and accidentally setting a Kmart bag onto my resin dominoes, a story to be told later). We ate at Grammie's and gave gifts. They were small presents (Dad got a Black&Decker electric wrench and Mom got a candy dish that's part of a china pattern she collects), and I gave Grammie her Shadow-Time clock as well as its special
.
At 4:30, we headed to Grandma's, first stopping by our house to pick up everyone's presents. Joanne (a family friend of seventeen years!) gave me her college edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, which she says was one of her favorite books and is bordering on thirty-four years old. I, in turn, gave her Griffin; she seemed to like it quite a bit (but you can never know about these things). Uncle J (apparently, but he has to love everything since I'm his niece) loved I See London and even noticed that I used the map he and mom wrote on for their trip to Paris!
Uncle B liked Shadows Behind Us. He even asked questions about it, and that always makes me feel good. (It's better than saying, "Yeah, this is nice," and then shoving it under the couch for "safe keeping".) We left goodie bags for two other uncles as well as Grandpa, and I gave Grandma
. The dominoes hanging from the ribbon all had a picture of one of her children (five altogether!), except the Kmart bag mom accidentally set on them transferred some of its red logo onto Uncle J's face, so it looks like blood. Of course, Christmas morning is too short of notice to fix this sort of thing, and you gotta roll with the punches. Homemade gifts are rarely perfect anyway.
Part of the goodie bag:
Cookies I made! Dad helped. But I'm still so proud of them, and you know what? They were pretty darn tasty!
The parental units gave me The Wednesday Letters (sans wrapping), which I'm nearly halfway through. (It's actually how I spent the evening: piled up in bed and reading. It was awesome.)
As with any big holiday, there's always one more step: cleaning. And boy, do I intend to clean today. Bring it.
I told her she was crazy and promptly fell back asleep.
Our own Christmas began a bit tense but smoothed itself out after a while. (Mom started the morning by hurriedly separating our boatload of homemade cookies into gift bags and accidentally setting a Kmart bag onto my resin dominoes, a story to be told later). We ate at Grammie's and gave gifts. They were small presents (Dad got a Black&Decker electric wrench and Mom got a candy dish that's part of a china pattern she collects), and I gave Grammie her Shadow-Time clock as well as its special
.
At 4:30, we headed to Grandma's, first stopping by our house to pick up everyone's presents. Joanne (a family friend of seventeen years!) gave me her college edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, which she says was one of her favorite books and is bordering on thirty-four years old. I, in turn, gave her Griffin; she seemed to like it quite a bit (but you can never know about these things). Uncle J (apparently, but he has to love everything since I'm his niece) loved I See London and even noticed that I used the map he and mom wrote on for their trip to Paris!
Uncle B liked Shadows Behind Us. He even asked questions about it, and that always makes me feel good. (It's better than saying, "Yeah, this is nice," and then shoving it under the couch for "safe keeping".) We left goodie bags for two other uncles as well as Grandpa, and I gave Grandma
. The dominoes hanging from the ribbon all had a picture of one of her children (five altogether!), except the Kmart bag mom accidentally set on them transferred some of its red logo onto Uncle J's face, so it looks like blood. Of course, Christmas morning is too short of notice to fix this sort of thing, and you gotta roll with the punches. Homemade gifts are rarely perfect anyway.
Part of the goodie bag:
Cookies I made! Dad helped. But I'm still so proud of them, and you know what? They were pretty darn tasty!
The parental units gave me The Wednesday Letters (sans wrapping), which I'm nearly halfway through. (It's actually how I spent the evening: piled up in bed and reading. It was awesome.)
As with any big holiday, there's always one more step: cleaning. And boy, do I intend to clean today. Bring it.