Christmas Craziness

Well, another Christmas has come and gone. This year was a bit different than years past though....

For starters, I got ALL my shopping done in one trip!! It only took me 5 hrs including travel time!! : ) That's very exciting for me. And this year, we didn't go on a family vacation as we have the past 5 years. We had been doing this since with 3 of us kids in university, in 3 different provinces at times, Christmas was really the only time when all 6 of us were together... usually one or two of the family members were missing the rest of the year. Also, this year my grandparents (on my mom's side) came over to our house on Christmas Eve and stayed overnight to share Christmas with us so that they didn't have to be alone this year. Our family has never done this before, but it turned out to be very nice to have them with us. Then we rushed off to be in Burlington for my dad's family Christmas at noon, and my grandparents joined us. It seemed kinda weird having both sides of my family Christmas together this year (my mom's side of the family is clearly very small!), but we all had lots of fun. We did a "re-gifting" gift exchange, which was lots of fun... a pretty loud and physical auction type game as it turns out. It's surprising how much everybody gets into it when all we're doing is trading each others junk. Also, now that all my younger cousins are growing up, it's been nice hanging out with them more and getting to know them better. When they were younger, they were just as annoying as little brothers and sisters, but now they're cool and i love them! This year, we also had the addition of 2 fiances to the family... 2 of my female cousins got engaged (yay)! They found some great guys and we had lots of fun together, so I'm very happy for them : ) Anyways, my brother got a Futureshop gift certificate for Christmas this year and had to spend it immediately, so he made me get up with him at 4:30 a.m. Boxing Day morning to be in Kitchener when the store opened at 6 a.m. Uuuugggh! My university life sleeping habits are not going away! I was soooo tired. But anyways, we were back home again by 8 a.m.... just in time for my parents to tell me that we're were leaving at 8:30 a.m. to go Boxing Day shopping in the States (Port Huron). We were pretty disappointed though... apparently the Americans don't make such a big deal out of Boxing Day shopping and sales like we do in Canada. We didn't find many bargains, so it was kinda a waste of a day.... oh well.

On a different note, I finally got a new laptop!!! My desktop computer was infected, ancient, completely out of hard drive space, and therefore, unbelievably slow. This upgrade has been in the waiting for like 3 years! So I'm very happy, however, it has been kinda overwhelming trying to figure everything out on this new beast... where are all my IT friends??!!

That was the gift I bought for myself, but other than that, this year I recieved a pile of kitchen utensils, 4 books (including a World Atlas... pretty cool for a Geographer!), lounge pants, a sweater, a CD carrying case, money and gift certificates, and a number other small things like stocking stuffers.

I wanna hear everybody elses Christmas stories now! : )