My Christmas Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Christmas-y Things I Did This Year

1. All night starting at midnight Rockin' Shoppin' at Alderwood Mall. It was a semi-traumatizing night of trying to shop in mall more crowded than most concerts I've been to.

2. A night of Christmas movies with STUN, which included The Ref and Die Hard.

3. Going up in the mountains with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for the hunting of the elusive Christmas tree.

4. Decorating my grandparents freshly hunted down tree with my pack of cousins, a night that included dancing, board games, gingerbread houses that were soon turned into Mayan ruins, and a Barbie movie.

5. Decorating our Christmas tree with everything we had to the Talking Heads cd, Stop Making Sense, a detailed account of which can be found here.

6. Chloe and I "stealing" dad's debit card and making our way to Alderwood Mall for some Christmas shopping of our own. We bought presents for mom, dad, and each other, my mantra for the day being "I hate Christmas", which is, of course, nowhere near true.

7. Mom, Chloe, and I hopped the Express Bus to Seattle one evening and delighted ourselves with the lights, the pre-Christmas madness, and a ride on the Qwest carousel, which was lovely. I freakin' love kiddie rides. After we'd had our fill and I'd had a grande organic milk vanilla latte with extra foam (yeah, coffee junkie/snob, I know. It's a problem, I'm dealing with it) we hopped the bus home.

8. A day before Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve baking spree, which included chess pie, rocky road fudge, and Granny Rosie's Christmas cookies.

9. A few-days-before-Christmas present wrapping marathon, which resulted in minor back problems for three family members.

10. Christmas Eve at grandma's house. What can I say? Dinner, washing dishes very slowly to torture the younger children with the wait for present opening, "caroling", presents, bickering, clever insults, getting stuck at the kids table after years of being allowed to sit with the big grownups, joy of presents, and the yearly wrapping paper fight and inevitable clean up.

11. After Christmas Eve at grandma's house. Chloe and I immediately set about stocking up for our all-nighter of barricading ourselves in my room to wait for Christmas morning. We stocked up on chess pie, cheese, chocolate, and Martinelli's to sit and watch five episodes of Family Guy before finally going to sleep at one am with an alarm set for 6:45.

12. Christmas morning. I woke up fifteen minutes before the alarm and woke Chloe up. In less than five minuted we had called mom and dad and told them to come get us, us not being allowed to leave the room until they were there. While we waited Chloe and I entertained ourselves with a horrible warbled version of Silver Bells.

13. Then came the present un-wrapping, which brought three pairs of glorious shoes, a ton of t-shirts from my much beloved Threadless, Fight Club, V For Vendetta, pajamas, round looms, and joy. For mom's account of the day, go here.