Monday, December 12, 2005

Christmas, All Weekend Long

Just Finished Reading: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

The Christmas season got fired up in a big way this weekend. Spent the whole weekend involved in Christmas activities and you know, it was pretty damn fun.

First up was Friday's surprise package from Judy and John. Judy has a WHOLE bunch of Christmas decorations she's accumulated over the years and now that CC and I are living on our own, she's taken it upon herself to share those things with us. It's a mutually beneficial arrangment you see. We get Christmas decorations. She gets closet space :-)

In Friday's package were two deer. They're made out of a clear, plastic, resin sort of stuff. Looks like glass but it's not as heavy and probably nowhere near as fragile. We've set them up on the coffee table.



Saturday was almost entirely Christmas. In the morning, we cleaned up the apartment a bit to get ready for decorating. In the afternoon, we went over to my parents' house to retrieve the Christmas decorations.

Originally we'd planned to get them on Sunday but it occured to me that if we picked them up Saturday afternoon, we'd have the whole day Sunday to do the actual decorating which means we'd be done over the weekend and we could just enjoy it after that. And so, in one day we went from having almost no Christmas decorations at all to having WAY more than we know what to do with. Seriously, I'd forgotten there was so much and we actually had to leave a few things at the house because there wasn't room in the truck. I'll sort through it all eventually and get it into some sort of organized chaos :-)

While we were over there, I ended up hanging the Christmas lights. I wasn't planning on doing it you know. I was thinking that, this being my first year on my own for Christmas, I might actually avoid the ladder climbing. That was my first though at least. Didn't work out that way. All these years, I've been the only one to hang the lights on the house so no one else knew what pattern they went up in or how they were attached to the house. So up I went and down, and up and down, over and over again until they were finished. Not sure how they look though. We left before the sun went down so I never got a chance to see them lit. :-)

Saturday night was CC's boss' Christmas party. It's a big, family thing with games for the kids and prizes and presents and Santa and even a sleigh ride. We got there around 7ish and the party was in full swing. Kids everywhere, parents enjoying watching the kids play, parents enjoying the free-flowing open bar :-) There was also a lot of really good food and we had a great time.

After all the kid stuff was done, the parents gathered in the front sitting room, kids in the back watching a movie. We got in a big circle and drew numbers for a gift exchange. It worked like this, you pick a present in the order of your number. You can either open the present you picked from under the tree or you could steal someone else's present and then THEY would go and pick a present from under the tree. Works great if you're the last person to pick. You can pretty much see what's available and go with it. Me? Number 1. That's right, I went first.

My pick was this really nice, ceramic cake-serving dish. It was raised up on a pedistal, very Christmasy and it came complete with some sort of little cake-like cookie. So naturally I did't get to keep it. Hell I didn't even get a chance to look at the cookies because the very next person to pick stole my platter. Not that we could say much. CC's boss was the next person :-) She really wanted that platter I guess :-)

We went home with a decorative basket that we've put in the bathroom to hold bath salts, a sushi serving set and a B.B. King Christmas CD. Not bad :-)

There was one guy I was starting to feel sorry for. I think he had every gift he picked stolen by someone else. First thing he got was a rather nice tea set. Lots of different types in a nice storage box. That didn't last long. So his next pick was a bottle of wine which promptly got taken by someone else. Then he got a massage pillow. He had that for a little longer but it got taken too. Then he got the sushi set which CC ended up taking. :-)

Sunday was decorating day. I'm not going into detail about the decorations. CC's taken pictures so I'll let her post those to her blog. You can see the results of our efforts when she has them finished.

Oh, and just a heads up, this next weekend we're having a cookie frosting party. It serves two purposes. First, we get to show off our decorations. Second, we get someone to frost our Christmas cookies for us :-) The whole family will be over and we'll all have lots of fun. There will be coffee for the old folks and hot chocolate for the young ones, the young at heart, and those of us who just think coffee is nasty :-)

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Boggles my mind. We picked up a Boggle set last week. CC and I like playing Boggle. It's more fun with just the two of us. Less pressure, more fun. Well, right now I am 0 for 2 at Boggle. I tend to start strong, build up a decent lead, then lose in the last few rounds. It's happened twice now and I'm starting to think CC's just toying with me :-) She let's me win a little so I don't feel bad and then BAM! She lowers the hammer and puts me out of my misery :-)

So, in the spirit of seeing just how bad I am at Boggle and sharing that with the known universe, I'm going to post my Boggle record in the sidebar over there. Try not to laugh if it takes me a while to actually WIN a game :-)

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