Monday, December 26, 2011

Post X-mas Round Up

My computer is pretty hit-and-miss right now.  I was able to get it started up and it's not freezing on my every 15 seconds.  It's a Boxing Day miracle.

A quick run-down on Christmas this year:

Both my grandmother's are in decent health after a pretty rough year, one having recently had hip replacement surgery and a weird intestinal thing that caused her to drop 30 lbs but has gone away as mysteriously as it started, and the other having fallen while cleaning her refrigerator last spring, breaking herself in many places.

Picture me knocking on the nearest piece of trim.

For all their weirdness and foibles and pre-adolescent moodiness my kids are pretty damn awesome.  They were gracious receiving their gifts and remembered all their pleases and thank-yous.  They are also coming to the age where they are thinking of others and made hand-made gifts for both grandmothers, my parents and I'm guessing they must have asked their dad for a little money because they got me a cute little necklace.  It has Snoopy on it.
They also got me a DVD player, as my Playstation has been doing a fine job of destroying most of my movies, but I have a hunch that *may* have actually been from my parents.

Quite honestly, all the kids were well behaved.. my sisters' kids are all pretty nice kids as well.  They all seemed to like their gifts as well. 

My haul included the aforementioned DVD player, necklace and... a Ukelele! So I have a new instrument to learn, as I was not aware that the Uke works on entirely different tuning and chord patterns.  I love getting stuff for Christmas that I would have a hard time justifying for myself.  I know other people like practical stuff, but my thing with practical gifts is, if I haven't already bought it for myself it's probably because I don't feel like I really need it.  So this was an awesome gift.  (In all fairness, the DVD player was pretty cool too, because that was on my list of things I WAS going to buy for myself, out of necessity, and now I don't have too).

Today consisted of some visiting/procrastination as I took my cousin back over to my parents (they were short on room and she loves spending time with my girls) and then stopped by my sister's place.  My youngest nephew is absolutely adorable and starting to speak in full sentences.  Amusing as all get out.  Coming home I got on taking down the tree, as my house is entirely too small to keep it up for long.  There was also the matter of putting away gifts and doing about two and a half weeks worth of laundry. 

We set up the newish Wii that was gifted to the kids from Nanny.  Well, technically.  December 1st my Nan usually sends me a check for each of the girls and instructions to get something for them from her, because God love her, she's getting old and has a hard time getting around and quite frankly, has better things to do with her remaining years than shop for kids, especially when she doesn't know what to get them anyway.

What this has resulted in is that in our house, Santa doesn't bring the really cool gifts... Nanny does.  I can picture the day when we finally have the Santa talk (which won't be long now, I think) and the question will be "Okay.. but Nanny's still real, right?"

I've mentioned a few times today that I count myself lucky that I don't dread family time.  My biggest worry when we all get together is.. "Oh man.. it's gonna get so LOUD".  Because it does.  Get loud, that is.  But if that's worst that happens, I think we're doing okay.

Hope everyone else had a lovely Christmas, or a satisfying secular Sunday.

7 comments:

  1. Nanny is most DEFINITELY real. That Santa cat is just a poser.

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  2. You could just tell them that the elves unionizedso santa closed up shop and outsourced the gift department to cheaper places to the south. Its believable, corporations do it all the time. Or you could tell them that sanata is crowd sourcing. lot of believable real world reasons why santa does not seem as involved in christmas as I child might expect. If your lucky you can pick something that leads to the kids wanting to boycot christmas and santa claus.

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  3. I refuse to let that fat bastard take credit for the "cool" stuff my boys(17&10) get for Christmas. that having bin said, he doesn't bring clothes either...

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  4. Nice loot, I told you a couple of my pretty good gifts. You will have to come over soon to help me consume it in the new glasses as well lol

    P.S. Santa brings clothes in my house lol and I don't let him take cred for the cool gifts either..

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  5. I don't do well with loud. Put me with more than 6 people and I start getting a lot of anxiety.

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  6. Yeah, I get like that.. I'm glad that I only live a block away from my parents place so that if I start getting twitchy I can find some reason to run home for a few minutes for quiet.

    This year I didn't have to let Santa take ANY credit for gifts. That's ONE upside to the girls being at their dads on xmas eve.

    and I'm laughing at Santa crowdsourcing.

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  7. Awww, that's cute. I like it when kids are thoughtful, even if they don't necessarily have the means to carry anything out on their own.

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