53 posts tagged “christmas”

i've been busy.

and it's been fun stuff but the one thing i'm missing is having down time. i mean, the christmas tree and all the other decorations are up, but i haven't had the time to be able to enjoy it. i would love a full weekend where we have ample opportunity to sit in our living room, listening to christmas tunes and do some craft together. or read. or play board games.

this sunday might give us that opportunity, as will christmas eve. but that is all.

and i'll take that over nothing.

i was just talking to my girlfriend about christmas eve and christmas day. and how it's managed with extended family, as well as our immediate family.

we both agreed that we need at portion of time to be with just the husband and our kids - to set aside at least christmas eve and/or christmas morning for us to build our own annual traditions.

it's not always easy though - family politics can come into play. for example - if you come from two large familes (or worse, if your side and his side are like oil and water), how do you decide on how to split it up AND reserve that special time for just your nuclear family?

my in-laws do not live in the same city as us but if they did, both sides are small enough to have christmas dinner together. and i would have no problem having them over late in the morning to open presents with chaeli. but i would still want christmas eve pretty much to ourselves. a drop by from a friend is no big deal, so long as we get to stay where we are. at home.

so i want to hear from those out there - how do you do it? what's your idea christmas?

note: to all those replying, it seems as though people think that i'm having family politics over the holidays and i just want to clarify, that i'm not. but i notice it's common amongst a lot of people i know. :)

this past saturday, we had our annual 'deep fried turkey and kid's secret santa exchange' party at steve and cor's house.

what a good party - i just felt like a huge release being there with good friends. laughing and talking and best of all - the kids are so good at playing on their own now. they spent most of the time in the basement with each other. ah bliss!

an important lesson learned within five minutes of arriving - even though i think people never read my facebook status updates, they SO read them.

within the first hour, the following facebook statuses by yours truely was discussed:

- that i admitted to staring at zac efron's 6-pack in '17 again'
- that i love red, orange and yellow peppers, but am not fond of green peppers
- that i almost went to see 'new moon' on my own

i think the highlight of the night was the guys chin-up contest. boys will be boys, after all.

afterwards, steve l. said, "i'm very disppointed with myself. hoa! i should hire you to train me back into shape."

to which hoa's reply was, "okay. but you HAVE to listen to me. if i tell you to do a push-up, you can't just say, 'bah! why bother?'"

hoa totally had steve l. pinned on that one because that's EXACTLY the type of thing steve l. would say.

and i think it's these little conversations of parties that seems to stick with me the most. the kind where a smaller group is off to the side, chatting and having a good laugh or two.

sometimes i wish i had that magical, twitchy nose like that samantha from bewitched. ah - when t.v. shows were a league of their own. in a good way.

and as much as i wished i had powers to make my closet, or any space in my house, either big or small, become instantly organized and clean in matter of a milli-second, the reality is, of course, that i can't do that. and even if i could, would i really be using my powers just to clean closets?

anyway, this is something i have been wanting to do since september but something always came up. and as we had no plans today, i decided to go for it.

two hours later, i am left with just my cd case and one half of a shelf piled of magazines to go through. and i just can't do anymore. two hours in a closet is enough! i will do that half a shelf and cds another day.

most importantly, i organized all the christmas presents that i bought. yes, that's right. you heard me.

not only do i organize my christmas shopping lists into spreadsheets where there is one spreadsheet for each - my familly, doug's family, doug and chaeli and misc. gift... not only do i create another spreadsheet to correlate with the other four, but this one being by store, either online or off, so i don't end up running all over town, hitting stores more then once... but at some point, i organize my gifts so that all the gifts going to thunderbay are in one or two large shopping bags, and i do the same for presents for chaeli, doug and my own side of the familly.

there is a chaotic period where i shop and just pile everything in the corner of my walk-in closet, still in their bags/boxes.

it was driving me crazy. now, they are all organized. all i need to do is pull them out in the order that they need to be wrapped - doug's family being the front in line.

yup.

i'm psychotic.

there are a lot of parties, celebrations and events being piled into our already booked weekends from now until the end of the year.

doug and i have one weekend this month where nothing is scheduled. nothing - for the whole weekend. and just that one weekend alone. chaeli will be staying at my parents' place.

and you know i'll want to head out somewhere nice for dinner. probably with friends, actually, so we can have an adult night. where, i don't know. somewhere new and interesting.

i love this season. i do. i (knock on wood) just hope that we all stay healthy enough to enjoy all these fun things we have planned. a run-down of events we've got schedule:

- ada and hoa's duo birthday party
- cathy's daughter's birthday party
- SCAW charity concert followed by dinner ath roger mooking's kultura
- stuart mclean's reading/music concert after dinner on baldwin street
- disney on ice followed by a visit to city hall and dinner
- visit from MIL for an extended weekend
- visit to a christmas tree farm

and then, of course, christmas and new year's. and ta-dah! hello 2010!

it' not halloween yet and i've finished my christmas shopping. how crazy is that?

i think ensue asked if i'm finishing it earlier and earlier each year. well, i don't think so. :)

but this year, is a bit different. my MIL is coming first weekend in December which means that she will be exchanging the christmas loot when she's here. i needed to get it all done in time to wrap before she comes. and no, i haven't started on the wrapping. SOME needs to be left until after halloween.

• when i went to university for the first time, mom started to give me (as a side gift) a care package for christmas. this would basically cover the 2nd part of my school year in terms of supplies - shampoo, soap, tooth paste, etc. of course, after i moved home, this all stopped. but now that i'm living in my own home with my own family, she still continues to do this. it was a bit strange at first - after all, i'm now taking care of my own family and can afford to buy my own toothpaste. but still, there's something sweet about it. i've come to look forward to my care package. it's not what's inside it that matters - but the symbolic representation it offers from a mother that still looks after her daughter. as we get closer to christmas, i remind doug that we don't have to stock up too much on things that i know we'll be getting from mom soon enough.

• i'm looking forward to fall this year. and i'm hoping that fall will stay a little while before winter hits. it's such a shame that my favourite season of the year is so short. but i do love fall. i love it's smell, the breeze and it's colours. it's also full of fun activities - hiking, apple-picking, farmer's market (during harvest time), thanksgiving and halloween. there's just so much to look forward to but unfortunately, not enough weekends to do them all.

• we're having thanksgiving at my parents' place this year. usually, my aunt and uncle always hosts both thanksgiving and christmas but we've decided that thanksgiving should be at my parents' place. they just bought a deep turkey fryer. i'm excited about that alone! mmm... deep fried turkey. for those who've tried this, you'll agree that it's not at all greasy. the skin is crisp and there's no grease clinging on the outer skin part only, but because it fries up so quickly, it seals the meaty area from getting greasy inside and locking in the juices.

• there is so much to do in the next couple of months, including a live reading-performance from one of my favourite canadian author, stuart mclean. ada got us tickets and i'm psyched to go - especially as her and i have been talking about it for the past two years.

• christmas seems far away but really, it is just around the corner. i've started christmas shopping. in fact, i'm nearly done all my stocking stuffers (except for doug's) and need to focus on just the main gifts. the only person i've finished the main gift shopping is for chaeli. and that's only because when it comes to toys, especially popular ones, there's too much of a risk for it being sold out before christmas. plus, i bought her collector item toys from transformers, revenge of the fallen. some of them are already sold out. anyway, as usual, i plan to finish my shopping by early november so i have time to mail it to my in-laws. i have a great list this year and am excited to see how my ideas are received.

• christmas activities are also really high on my list which is part of the reason why i like to get the shopping done early and out of the way. this year, i'm wondering if i want to do the nutcracker ballet again. i didn't think i would want to do it every year but i feel like it again. it is such a great treat to experience. and of course, especially as this will be ada and hoa's last year in toronto, before moving out west, i do hope to go the the 'sleeping children around the world' charity concert. it's held eary december and kick-starts our christmas holiday season.

last year, i had a choice of buying a desktop, day-to-day sudoku puzzle calendar or a day-to-day scrap booking calendar (each page of that week went towards a theme). i went for the latter.

and did i use any of those weekly themes, one might wonder? of course not. except once - when i made my mother a birthday card. of course, i've saved the ones that i really like and plan to use but for the time being, i admit that i totally chose the wrong calendar.

this past christmas, doug bought a 2009 one for me and i was happy to see that not only did a get a 365 different sudoku puzzles, one for each day, but that it also was very square and compact, taking up as little space as possible.

what i didn't expect was that it's a sudoku VARIETY. which means that there are several different types of sudoku puzzles - one for every day of the week. and only one day of that week is of the usual kind. the others?

holy cow. i can't even do some of them! there's one that has 16 grids - 0-9 and A-F need to be fit within each mini-grid, as well as on each row and column. another is called sudoku jigsaw and the grids are not square grids but irratically and randomly created borders.

it is now the thirteenth day of the new year and i have more then half of the days of sudoku puzzles to try and solve - many of them are left half finished as i try to finish the easier one and get them out of the way.

AND I'M LIKE A MASTER AT SUDOKU!

i can't take it.

christmas day panned out to be excellent. chaeli came into our room to get us before heading down to see if santa had visited.

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just as we all suspected, the ginger bread cookies she helped doug bake from scratch had been eaten, the cup of milk was empty and a crumpled up tissue paper had been tossed onto the empty plate which had only a quarter of a cookie left. she was semi-concerned of why santa did not finish all two of the cookies we offered for him - we explained to her that he had a LOT of cookies to eat last night while visiting everyone's house all over the world.

she then went into series of questions like, "how can he fit all those presents in that one bag of his?" and, "can santa hear what i'm thinking al the time?" as well as my favourite, "who has more power? santa or god?"

the questions stopped when she suddenly realized all the gifts that santa had left, not just under the tree, but in our stockings as well as three additional new stockings, also filled to the brim, left on our couch...

i think she was about to burst with excitement right before diving into the stocking stuffers (as traditional each year, we start off with those first, ending with the gifts from friends and then family).

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i noticed this year around, it didn't take nearly as long for her to unwrap all the gifts. i guess, being older, she's more efficient at whipping and tearing through the wrapping paper. and she was pretty good at not stopping too long to play with each toy she unwrapped.

well, other then her and doug trying to figure out how to turn optimus prime into a truck...

it was just after 11am after we finished unwrapping all the gifts (except from my parents and my aunt/uncle, which we did when we saw them for the later half of the day). doug and i went into the kitchen and started to prepare breakfast. with starbuck's christmas blend coffee in the pot, we made some cheesy scrambles on top of buttered tatty-scons, as well as a side of sliced blood pudding. yum! it was a semi-scottish brunch (semi because we had cheesy scrambles rather then poached eggs).

after brunch, we sat around in the living room, allowing ourselves to take a closer look at our presents. doug read his new harry potter book while i did my favourite thing - organize everyone's presents into piles under the tree. i have this insane need to get some of the more worn-out christmas gift bags and putting each person's loot into their own gift bag. it's just easier - when it's time to clean up, all the little things are already in a bag, ready to be taken away.

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chaeli went for a 3pm nap and was down for an hour (which was a good thing if she wanted to stay up late). my parents arrived about half an hour later which gave us plenty of times to exchange presents before heading over to my aunt's/uncle's place for dinner.

at around 6pm, we went across the underground parking lot and was greeted with a 21lb turkey that just came fresh out of the oven. it was unbelievably huge. but what was even more unbelievable was that we actually ate half of that damn turky. HALF! crazy! and i had three servings of turkey myself. i had all the side dishes, too, but didn't go back for 2nds/3rds other then to have more of that yummy, juicy, white-meat.

my aunt's christmas decorations is always so beautiful. she's got a very classy taste and her tree is usually coloured with either a light, warm pink and gold or bright red and gold. this year, she chose the latter.

after dinner, we did our last and final round of gift exchanges. i was pleased that everyone liked what i picked out for them, since i make it a goal to get at least one thing that would make each person very happy.

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cheali posed infront of the tree in her preppy outfit i picked out for her for dinner time. we chatted throughout the night until close to 11:30pm before saying heading off.

another year, another christmas.

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contnuing with yesterday's entry of my favourite gifts received, here's some gifts that i enjoyed giving out:

• a self-made coffee table book of chaeli's 2nd year photos - PIL and parents
  
• a coffee table book of steam engine trains - PIL
  
• mickey mouse christmas ornament - PIL and SIL/BIL
• garden marker cement kit - SIL
• silly cat and dog stocking stuffer book bought for SIL/BIL (cats are from jupiter, dogs are from pluto found in used book store)
• russell peter's latest dvd, red, white and brown - SIL/BIL
  
• going to bed book and blankie - baby niece
• bbc's wild china in blu-ray - parents
• hand made ear rings and necklace set - mom
• shogun novel - dad
• music from the coffee lands and italian cafe CDs - doug
• the wine log - doug
• 'in the night garden' characters, igglepiggle, upsy-daisy, makka-pakka - chaeli
• homeward bound I & II dvd - chaeli
• vtech nitro jr notebook - chaeli
• best of imax space collection - uncle
• devil wears prada and definitey maybe - aunt