Emmanuel

Today was Christmas Eve, and a pretty good one at that. It was low key, but that is exactly how I like my holidays. We used to have my mom's entire side of the family celebrate Christmas eve together, but then everyone got married and reproduced and it's too many people with too many schedules to work around, let alone manage in one household. I don't mind. I used to hate Christmas Eve, to be honest. So many people! When I was little, they had a gift exchange thing which always made me nervous when they'd steal each others gifts and such, and they always concluded with a marshmellow fight. We'd find petrified marshmellows laying around Grandma's trailer all year round. At that time, I was too young to participate in the gift exchange and I often hid in the other room during the marshmellow fights after two years of suffering a black eye resulting from marshmellows propelled by men that didn't realize that they didn't throw like little boys anymore. Apparently my eye is a marshmellow magnet. Then, when I was old enough to actually participate in the gift exchange and do the marshmellow fight, they discontinued the tradition. Kinda sucks being the littlest one sometimes. After that changed, everyone crowded in my house and I spent half the day hiding in my room. I hated not being able to find a place to sit in my own house. And one year, someone thought it'd be nice to share the flu with the whole family. Stomach flu. Boxing day consisted of vomit for me that year. But now we celebrate Christmas in January. Or even March. So I can hold my dread off til then.

Today I slept in, and then woke up and played through my Christmas piano book while my mom made me breakfast. I played a couple songs from the Nutcracker and it made me realize I haven't seen that in awhile. We used to see it in the Warton Center every year in elementary school. I kinda miss it. I made a last minute run to WalMart to get Kris a gift and came back and at dinner. We had potato bologna. This time, I didn't eat the skin. I also ran through my thing for tonight. He had told me to talk for 5 or 10 minutes. When I ran through, it was 20. So I cut some stuff out and then went off to the Christmas eve service. It was a pretty nice service and my speaking thing went really well. I had a lot of people come up to me afterwards to thank me or tell me that they appreciated it. It was really encouraging. I feel more like an adult now. It's weird. I had a conversation with 3 women in my church. I'm pretty sure this has never happened before.

My dad is just really cracking me up lately. Yesterday, my dad said the word "Fricken." Granted, he was quoting someone, he wasn't using the word for his own purposes, but nonetheless, the worst thing I've heard my dad say is "Doggone," so hearing him say fricken was pretty hilarious. Also, today when we were on the way back from WalMart, a car drove by us with one headlight out, and my dad said, "So does that count as a padiddle?" My dad correctly identified a padiddle. I couldn't believe it. I don't even know where he would have heard it from. I mean I am a padiddle champion, but I didn't realize that I had done enough of it in a car with him that he would catch on. He's getting frisky in his old age.

The Borrowers were feeling the Christmas spirit today. I wish they were this generous every Christmas eve. I found 3 things I haven't seen in awhile in a span of like, 10 minutes. I found my laptop mic and camera charger (THANK GOD) as well as some t-shirt transfers I bought a couple years ago and my blue zip up fleece. It was almost like Christmas. That was exciting. I made my parents take a Christmas Eve picture, mostly cuz I looked pretty nice tonight, and I have very few pictures with my parents. I also may or may not have caught up on the Degrassi. Am I addicted? Yes.

I should probably get to bed because I have to get up early tomorrow. We're headed off to Kris's to open presents and all that fun stuff. I am very excited. I love being with my immediate family. It'll be weird without Grandma though... I may have convinced my parents to spend the night, and I can't wait to have a day with my niece and nephew. I haven't gotten a good one with them in awhile and I just can't even think of a better way to spend a day than some competitive gaming with them, which is bound to happen. They got the competitive gene for sure. The last few times I've been over there, we've played soccer. I'm thinking that won't be an option this time. But maybe I'll bring my snow pants and we can play in the snow. I'm sure we'll also get in some pool, air hockey, and Wii. Kacie also got a new game for her birthday that I promised her we'd play, and JD also will be receiving a Tom and Jerry DVD, so maybe we can watch it tomorrow night. Maybe we'll even build a fort in the living room and sleep there. Oh man I'm just getting so excited I can hardly stand it. I love those kids :) They keep me young ;) Funny that I was just talking about feeling like an adult...

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope it's great!