This was a good Christmas. We are at my grandma's house in Oregon so we got to see lots of family. We got up around 9am, went out into the living room (I dragged my sleeping bag in so I was comfortable) and just kinda sat there for a while. Dad read part of the Christmas story and then we opened presents. I mostly got things like socks and a small electric burner so I can fry stuff in my apartment. Nothing glamorous, but definitely useful. I did however get get two books of Peanuts comics and a book 'The Gospel According to Peanuts'. I am looking forward to reading them. I don't care much about presents and I was just happy to see all of my family.

Around 10:30 we went over to my aunt's new house. It is a nice house, but it is always odd when you go back to what was once your home and things have changed. We messed around for a while and saw some cousins who I hadn't seen in a couple of years. Then they left and the more family showed up. It was great to see them all again. I especially enjoyed seeing two of my cousins who we spent all of our time with growing up. The third brother is in England but gave us a ring later on. My aunt's house has a second floor with a railing overlooking the living room and a ceiling fan just within reach from the balcony. Just within our reach and just beyond our aunt's reach. So at first I was below and tossed up a candy wrapper to one of my cousins, then asked him to put it on the top of the fan blade so when Aunt Donna turned the fan on, it would go zooming off. Well this led to seeing what other things we could put up there like a paper plate, a chain of paper clips and a ribbon with a bow. Well while we were up in the loft, we noticed a bunch of sticky pads and thought about putting one on top of the fan that said 'Hi Donna'. We decided against it, but did make 10 such notes and hide them around her house. So now there are little yellow notes under the hall rug, behind a picure, on top of a mirror, and in the middle of the pad of sticky notes. So it will take Aunt Donna at least a few months to find all the sticky notes. They knew we were up to something but didn't know what.

We sang Happy Birthday and had a birthday cake (altough we didn't light any candles because we couldn't exactly fit 2000+ candles on the cake). There's a thought for you to chew on: What would Jesus want for His birthday? Around 4ish we had a big ham dinner (we were all full by the first round but my grandma and I decided it was worth the effort to go for seconds). Then we went into the living room and opened stockings.

Now you have to understand that stockings are a family tradition. Growing up our families would give gifts to the other families but as the families grew we knew this was going to get expensive, so instead we opted to get stocking stuffers to give to everyone and we would all open stockings together. Of course all the stocking stuffers are wrapped so there are lots of small pieces of wrapping paper. Well, the only good thing to do with wrapping paper after it has been used is to press it into a ball and throw it at someone across the room. So if you're afraid of flying objects, don't spend Christmas with my family. All in all it was a very good time for everyone.

Happy Birthday! Merry Christmas!



In Other News...
Boy did we miss out. A white Christmas in Houston! They had around 6 inches of snow. You can tell that someone was really praying for a miracle!