XII: Christmas Day

Mom by our front door on Christmas Day.

I may have mentioned this before, but technically the Twelve Days of Christmas begins on December 25th. In this day in age, most people are so relieved once Christmas is over, it's unfathomable that you would want to then celebrate the holiday for 11 more days! That's why I decided to end mine, rather than starting it, on Christmas Day.

We woke up in the morning and immediately I had to start getting everything ready. Dylan had set his alarm to wake me at 7am so I could put the breakfast casserole on in the crockpot, and luckily I got to go back to sleep for a couple more hours. Once I woke up, I had stockings to stuff and cookies to bake!

Mom, Dad, Adrienne, Brandon and Angie came over shortly thereafter and joined Dylan, Robbie and I. We all finished up our last minute stocking stuffing and gift wrapping and had brunch together. Then we all started our Secret Santa opening. Borrowing from the method we used at my work's Secret Santa on Thursday, we went in alphabetical order of the city we were born in. Angie was born in Indio, so she went first and gave her present to the person she drew in Secret Santa, and so on and so forth until everyone had their gifts unwrapped. Everyone seemed so thrilled with their gifts and it was so much fun to open them and "ooo and ahh" together. After the presents were openings, we did our stockings which was even more fun than the presents. Out of my gifts, I was most thrilled with a couple of homemade things from my siblings. My brother made me a CD called "The Fostex Files" which compiled a bunch of old recordings from his Fostex digital 16-track recorder. There were songs that had never been finished that he enlisted help of some friends to complete, including "Let Me Put My Love Into You" which had been started for Shitting Glitter, but finished by Invisible Material; a cover of "It's Impossible" from the movie The Valley of the Dolls which was meant to be a submission for the Patty Duke Fanzine, and a song which had been called "Lucky Bug" before but now finished as "Oh Brother" with vocals from my sister. Speaking of whom, Adrienne was my secret Santa and one of her gifts was an amazing homemade cookbook which featured great recipes from magazines, compiled and organized into sections by her and mom, with hand-written annotations!

The whole gang on Christmas! Dad, Robbie and Mom (front) with Me, Angie, Brandon, Adrienne and Dylan in our living room.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm kind of the king of stocking stuffers, so I was very happy to watch everyone discovering the small treasures I had tucked down into their stockings. One of the best things I gave were tickets for me, Dylan, Angie and Brandon to go snowboarding at Mountain High. I made little tickets and put them in envelopes for each of us. I have only been snowboarding one time, shortly after I moved to LA, at Mountain High - and I've wanted to go back ever since!

After the present opening, Robbie left to go to her sister's house, and Dad and Dylan both wanted to rest. So me, mom, Adrienne, Brandon and Angie went on a "Wine and Walk," where we walked around WeHo with our wine (duh!) and visited Tara and a couple other local landmarks.

For our evening entertainment, we went to the Grove's Pacific Theatre to see "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" which was a lot of fun! We all loved the movie and had a great time talking about it together afterward as we ate a late dinner at Canter's.

It was a really fun Christmas and I felt so fortunate to once again spend it with my loved ones!

Comments

Scarlet said…
Yes, what a wonderful, fun-filled day it was! I loved every minute of it!! Don't forget to blog Monday, it was fun too!
3:16 PM
Devin Tait said…
Well, Monday is after my 12 days of Christmas so I'm taking a break! My next blog will be my top 10 songs of 2011.
4:28 PM
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