The 2013 Christmas Recap, Part II

Christmas morning in a house of eight people is all at once delightful, crazy, and hectic, and I loved every minute of it. As you know, I don't really get the "Christmas morning" experience very often anymore, and haven't really been able to get it since I've been living on my own (with very few exceptions). Over the years I've become cynical enough and battle-hardened by the world to view Christmas as simply for the kids more than anything else. Yes, of course, there's the religious aspect to it, but as I'm not religious, that never even factored in on my radar when it came to the holidays. Instead, I focused on the family aspect of it, and (if at all possible) I always tried to spend the holidays with family. This hasn't always been possible, of course, as you know, but for the past two years I've been able to do it with moderate, if not complete, success.

So, that being said, let's pick up where I left off before.

A little before 8AM or so on Christmas morning, everyone came downstairs and Christmas officially began. Shortly beforehand, Daisy asked me "Did you look in the living room?" When I replied that I hadn't aside from a cursory glance at the tree, she told me to close my eyes and went to hide something. Okay, whatever works,  I thought. Far be it from me to ruin any surprises. All I'd been doing up to that point was drinking coffee and dicking around on my computer, which really isn't much different than any other morning when I wake up. I figured I'd see everything, including all of the gifts and stockings (which were laid out on the couches and chairs one by one) when we opened gifts, and I hadn't thought much of anything else. Again, the whole Christmas is really for the kids mentality of everything.

After everyone was up and mobile (I can't remember whether we had breakfast first or not), we all went into the living room where we distributed and opened up gifts, much to the delight of Daisy's five-year-old nephew. It was really cute, and more than anything else, fun.

Now that everything's passed, here's the rundown of what I got Daisy -- since I can finally share it here:

• A pair of knee socks with the word VEGAN written up the sides of them
• A "What Does the Fox Say?" t-shirt (this one, specifically)
• A case of Bob's Red Mill Vegan Vegetable Soup (four big packs of it, in a box)
• A new pair of earbuds, since she seems to lose hers on a frequent basis and/or doesn't always have a pair available when she needs them at work; the ones I got her had a peacock paint scheme
• The book What Would Wonder Woman Do? which I found amusing and cute
• Three large tubes of apple cinnamon incense
• An "ocean wave projector" for her room, as it looked neat and she'd been wanting a star projector or something similar for a long time (she loved it, and it works really well)
• A tie-dye shirt in brown and white, as it matched both the socks and her car, and she loves earth tones
• Two big bags of chocolate-chip/peanut butter waffles, which I finally gave her today to take back home with her as I'd forgotten to do so before we left for Omaha
• A new mix CD for the car

There's probably one or two other little things I'm forgetting, of course, but that's the vast majority of it. She loved it all; each one of the gifts meant something; I wanted her to be able to enjoy all of them because it wasn't me just randomly picking out shit to get for her, but me carefully thinking about -- and having reasoning behind -- every one of them. She loves my waffles, so I made special ones for her. She loves the mix CDs I make, so I made her another one. She loves my tie-dye, so I made her one of those as well. She loves Wonder Woman, so that's why I got the book. The soup we'd gotten from Big Lots when I was there over Thanksgiving, and it was great, so I got her a case of it. Etc. Even though it wasn't a lot (as I am poor) I put a lot of careful planning into what I chose, as I thought that would make everything that much more meaningful.

Daisy, once again, went way overboard on stuff for me (as she usually does), but over the time we've been together I have learned not to question her; she is decently watchful of her finances, and knows what she can afford and what she can't. Here's a short list of stuff she got for me herself, though I am probably forgetting a bit of it:

• A framed Marvel Comics covers poster
• A rolled up in-a-tube Star Trek poster
• A stocking filled with vegan jerky, macaroons, coconut dates, a Marvel t-shirt, and some other little goodies of that ilk, including a cup of vegan chicken ramen
• A black, faux-fur-lined zip-up hoodie (because she was finally able to find one which had lining all the way up and down the arms, which is what I wanted; it's near-impossible to find that). She said it's a women's hoodie, but I don't care.
• Two massive, several-pound bags of nuts -- one almonds, one pistachios (already shelled, of course)
• A dress shirt (which I'd already received, early, and had worn to the Christmas Eve church service)
• A Flash costume hoodie to replace the one I had that had worn out, badly, and the zipper had broken on the old one ages ago.

I later conferred with Daisy while typing up this list to be sure that I hadn't forgotten anything major (or at all, lest I seem ungrateful by its omission). This is pretty much everything.

Mind you, the Flash hoodie itself probably cost Daisy the same amount as almost everything I got her listed above; those things are not cheap. I tried not to think about it. Daisy loves me; whatever she spent on me is unimportant if she can afford it, and she doesn't get anything she can't afford.

From the rest of the family, we got a lot of assorted and very useful stuff as well, stuff geared toward starting our household after the wedding, for the most part -- her oldest sister got us a Pyrex measuring cup I'd wanted for us, for example, and a large set of glass mixing/baking bowls that we definitely needed. Her other sister got us an Alaskan chopping knife. The parents gave us both cards with checks in them, along with a really nice cookie sheet and frying pan. There was a lot of wonderful stuff like that, and I let Daisy keep most of it up there and put it in storage for when we get married and combine our stuff -- after all, I don't want to risk breaking or dirtying a lot of it beforehand, and it's not like I'll have time to be cooking a lot or baking while I'm teaching during the spring semester before the wedding.

There was one very special gift from Mama that I would be remiss if I didn't mention, though -- she made both of us matching fleece sweatshirts in a Navajo pattern. They're slightly different to tell them apart (Daisy's has her initials embroidered into the lower front, and the pattern is oriented differently above the chest), but they're both awesome, and really warm:

 

Oh yeah. Aren't we stylish?

We realized long ago that we're going to be that couple that goes out in matching outfits to look cute together. I used to look down on people like that, to be honest with you. Now I can't say anything. Not that I would anyway, because I love the shirts and they're incredibly comfortable and really warm. Is it necessarily my normal style? No,  but I don't care. It's awesome and I love it. I told Daisy I can't wait to teach my classes in mine this coming semester. And I will, too.

As for what we got everyone else, I let Daisy handle most of that. She got teddy bears for all of the kids (six of them in total), got a nail-stamping kit for Mama, and some assorted stuff for Dad and everyone else. I didn't keep track of, or even remember a lot of what she'd gotten for everyone, as she had it coordinated and catalogued, and she wrapped 95% of it herself in the sewing room the night before. I made two tie-dyes for the parents -- both of them the same patterns and colors (red/orange/yellows) and told them they could pick whichever one they wanted, since they were the same and were both the same size. By the end of the evening, Dad had already marked the one he wanted as his with a Sharpie in the collar area. Mama will more than likely alter hers, as she does with most of her shirts, so that the collar is wider and lower -- she doesn't like anything around her neck and collarbone if she can avoid it. Neither does Daisy -- I made the joke to Daisy that for her birthday or anniversary I was going to get her a box full of turtlenecks to see how she reacted. The joke didn't go over well.

I like turtlenecks because they're warm and I can wear them under things. But that's just me.

The rest of the day went quite lazily and slowly, which I think is what everyone -- including myself and Daisy -- needed. We had a wonderful Christmas dinner which all of us helped to prepare, involving turkey, stuffing, vegetables, Daisy's famous mashed potatoes (which, since I adore them, I brought all the rest of them home), and fresh baked rolls. That night, because he'd been wanting me to for the entire time I'd been there up to that point, all of us watched Disney/Pixar's Planes with the five-year-old nephew. I fell asleep through a good chunk of it, but what I saw of it, I thought was really good. You know, for a kids' movie, anyway. I'll probably have to watch it over and over with said nephew and/or my own kids at some point anyhow, so it's not like I missed much and/or anything I won't see again eventually.

Once everyone went to bed, I sat up for a bit with the brother-in-law and watched some Blackadder with him on Netflix before taking a shower and going to bed myself sometime later. I don't remember when, however; I just knew that Daisy and I had plans to go out the next day to get some post-Christmas sale stuff from Gordman's and a few other places, as that tends to be our new tradition after holidays. Holidays are over? Time to go out and get deals on everything we can that's holiday-related, like coffee and gift sets and the like. This time around, I had two $50 Visa gift cards from my parents to use, which was basically free money as it's not like I can use it to pay my bills or rent or anything like that.

What did I get? Did I use the gift cards? And how did my "birthday" celebration go? Well, I'll cover that in the next part in this series...