The Holiday Report
2006-12-27 - 9:52 p.m.

I guess it's time for a holiday report.

I think our little party on Saturday went very well. Everyone showed up, though not all on time, and we even had two people come who we didn't think were going to make it. You might remember me mentioning that B's brother D supposedly broke up with his girlfriend, but for whatever reason she and her 13-year-old daughter came to the party.

It was nice that they came, BUT I expected it to be all adults participating in the gift exchange/naughty Santa thing, so B and I both contributed gifts of alcohol...and of course the 13-year-old ended up with one of the bottles of alcohol. It all turned out okay in the end though, because I was able to take it in exchange for the present I had.

We decided that the person who went first would also get another final turn at the end, and that turned out to be me. Originally I got the gift that N brought, which was a little collage that he made that I really wanted to keep, but P took it from me when it was her turn. I planned on taking it back from her at the end when I got another turn, but then I HAD to trade with the 13-year-old because we can't be giving her a bottle of Kahlua after all.

When all was said and done, I was glad that things turned out the way they did because the 13-year-old ended up with a Starbucks gift card, and she loves Starbucks, and P told N several times how much she loved his collage, so I would've felt bad had I taken it from her. Plus I got the Kahlua, so it wasn't a total loss.

I spent the morning on Saturday cleaning up a little bit more, then B came home around 1:30 with the food we ordered. We had a whole cooked turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce, plus two people brought desserts, I set out a big tray of cookies and I made the Midori drinks I'd planned on. I think some people liked the drinks, but they were too sweet for others. We also had beer, so there was something for everybody.

We didn't really get any pictures, unfortunately. B took a couple pictures right before the party started and he took one during the party, but that was it. We were too busy having fun to take pictures, I guess. We ate first, then exchanged Christmas presents, then did the gift exchange game. After that D and his girlfriend/whatever had to leave, but her daughter stayed and played cards with P, N, E and me for a while. We played a few rounds of Bullshit, which was really, really fund, then N had to leave. Then we played spoons and another game called Slap Jack. I hope we can all get together again and play cards before B and I move next year because it was a lot of fun.

Sunday we didn't do very much at all. Just spent the day relaxing and watching some TV, then after dark we drove around the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights.

On Christmas day we got up and opened our presents from each other, and we also had presents from B's mom that we'd not opened yet. B got me Ayumi's 2007 calendar, a suede jacket, a buttload of manga, and his mom got me a cute velour hoodie and pants. They're petite so the arms and pant legs aren't too long, though the pants are a little snug right now, but hopefully they'll fit better soon. :)

I got B some extra foam tips for his headphones, some nice sueded shirts, a heated back massager chair cushion-thing and a T shirt with a map of the Grand Canyon on it. He's actually getting one more thing from me sometime next month that was on backorder, too. And I'm supposed to be getting something from his brother D that's on backorder, so I'll have to wait and see what this is.

My mom called Christmas morning to get our email addresses because she'd gotten JCPenney gift cards for each of us and needed to email them from home, so later that day we got the emails and got online to pick out some stuff. I got this in white gold, this in pink and this also in pink, to match. B ended up with quite a bit more stuff because all of his things were on clearance or something. He got two fleece jackets, a fleece vest, fleece pants and a bathroom set (soap dish, toothbrush holder, etc.).

My dad also called Christmas morning to wish us Merry Christmas and said that he'd enjoyed the dessert we sent him from Hick0ry F@rms. He's really excited about our move to Arizona and even told B that he might want to come down and help us move when the time comes. That would be great. We could certainly use the help, plus it would be nice to see him. If he's really bored, maybe he can fly out there with us and help us move in, too. And hell, while we're all there maybe we can spend a few days in Vegas!

B and I got a bunch of listings from a realtor in Kingman, Arizona and we spent some time this evening looking through them. We found several in our price range that looked pretty nice, and one even had a pool and hot tub. Ultimately, though, we're going to have to physically look at these houses and the neighborhoods, etc., so we plan to have some houses picked out that we want to see, then we'll go meet with this realtor probably in February to go see the houses.

Is that enough for today? I think so. ;)

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