Jeez Louise

Do you know what? This Christmas was the nicest we’ve had in years. I don’t know. This year it really felt like Christmas. We even put our tree up and decorated it. Yeah, that’s a big deal.

Confession: We hadn’t had a tree in about three years. See, last year Rob has just been laid off (I never mentioned that here. It sucked. I cried. I also hadn’t mentioned that he got a new job last month. That was awesome. I laughed. Now you know) and we didn’t feel much like celebrating. The year before that, the dogs we were supposed to get were killed two days before Christmas. Kind of threw a pall over the whole thing (plus then Judd Nelson passed away a few days later). And the year before that, Rob’s parents were supposed to come here for Christmas. We had bought their plane tickets and everything. And then two days before they were supposed to fly in, Rob’s mom injured herself and was unable to travel. Totally sucked the Christmas Spirit out of everything.
This year, though, we were resolute in that our Christmas was going to be great. And it was. I won’t go into huge detail and list gifts because 1) that would probably be boring and 2) it wasn’t the gifts that made it great (okay I lied; I’ll mention one gift and one gift only: SNUGGIE REPRESENT YO!) It was just a really, really nice day with family. We ate, we opened gifts, my brother and sister-in-law played their instruments and sang. We came home and snuggled with the dogs (either Sprocket’s horrible face haircut is starting to grow out or I’m just used to it but oh man he is the cutest little boy… well, tied for cutest with Doozer) and ate the leftover turkey, tourtiere and meat pie Mom sent home with us while watching Love Actually and White Christmas for the umpteenth time.

The only downside to the whole thing was that on Christmas Day night, someone broke into my brother’s garage and stole a bunch of tools and a lighting fixture that they had out there, which they had just purchased and were going to install in their dining room after the holiday. Needless to say my brother is pretty annoyed, and the police say that there’s so much of this kind of thing going on around here that it’s unlikely they’ll find the culprits anytime soon.

Oh and the fact that, as usual, I forgot that stores around here aren’t open on Boxing Day (which was Saturday), and that after Christmas we have no Sunday shopping until May (don’t even ask – weird arbitrary laws) and didn’t go grocery shopping before Christmas, so the only food we have had for two days has been frozen burritos and leftover fruitcake.

But it’s still been a wonderful, wonderful Christmas and I’m looking forward to the rest of my vacation.