usmcsis's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- christmas 2004 merry christmas! i hope everyone has had a wonderful day. my wonderful christmas eve day carried over into a wonderful night surrounded by my family. for as long as i can remember my dad's side of the family has gotten together on christmas eve. when i was a kid we used to go to someone else's house every year. one year my grandma would have it at her house and the next year it'd be at my great aunt's house and so on. when i was in eighth grade i guess, some of the older members of the family said it was too much for them to be having christmas eve at their homes or whatever and the tradition almost died out. however, my dad, who values family more than anything, said that he didn't care what anyone else did, his house would be open on christmas eve for whoever wanted to come. and so for the past fifteen years the christmas eve tradtion has been for the family to gather at our house. the group of family members has gradually grown smaller over the years as cousins got married or moved away. last year it was my parents and i, my grandma, my dad's sister and her husband, and my cousin melissa and her husband and two kids. which i guess doesn't sound too small except it used to be upwards of thirty or more people. anyway, i have some cousins that i used to be very close with, that i grew up with just down the road. my cousin steph is just three years older than me and we look like sisters. her brother jamie is one year older than me and we used to be good friends. so we grew apart as she got married and then i got married and she started a family and i got divorced and so on and so on. as kids steph and jamie never came to our christmas eve get together because their grandparents on their dad's side had their family thing on christmas eve also. they would always come by later after everyone else was getting ready to go home. i always wished that they could come because i liked playing with them so much. steph always wished that she could come too because she didn't like going to her grandparents house. she's the only girl in the whole family and she always felt left out. anyway, i'm making this a long tedious story aren't i? so this year she asked me if we still did christmas eve at the house and i told her we did and she asked if i thought it would be alright if she and tony and the kids came. i was like of course it's okay and bring your mom and dad and your brother and your grandma. there was a divorce in the other side of her family, one of her dad's brothers i think, and it has caused major drama with the family get togethers and she has just decided that she has had enough. she has her own family now and she wants to do what she wants to do. i think that sounds like a fine idea to me. so we added another eight people to our christmas eve get together. it didn't come near to covering the fact that we were missing one very important person, but it did help lessen the hurt a great deal. and her boys are little, five and two i think, and they are just precious and it is so nice to have little one around again. my next youngest cousin is eight and she's past the age of christmas wonder and is into the are there anymore presents for me age. then she invited my parents and i over to her house this morning for christmas breakfast and to watch her boys open their gifts. so it was eleven of us for a nice carolina breakfast of eggs and sausage (when i say eggs and sausage, i really mean eggsandsausage, cause in carolina they cook it together and it is some kind of good) and biscuits and cheese and homemade jam. so two new christmas tradtions this year. pretty nice. i was so focused on telling ya'll what i gave for christmas yesterday and the reactions i got and the feelings i had that i forgot to tell ya'll what i got. funny that. marinda was my secret santa which was good for me because she and i have gotten kind of close and she knows me best out of everyone. i was expecting a gift card to the bookstore or something similar. instead she gave me something that i have been wanting for close to ten years. the funny thing is i never told her that i wanted one. anyway, she gave me the most beautiful leather bound journal. it is hand tooled on the front and has a leather strap with a bead to hold it closed. it is so gorgeous that i am almost afraid to write in it. almost. jermaine was not my secret santa but bought me a gift anyway. he bought me a wonderful vanilla lotion from bath & body works. it's their christmas vanilla smell, similar to warm sugar cookies. seriously, i could practically lick this stuff it smells so good. (the link is actually to the warm vanilla sugar lotion which is the lotion i use every day) and he got me a burt's bees beeswax lip balm because he knows how obsessed i am with lip balm. and i absolutely adore burt's bees which he didn't know but was jumping up and down with excitement when i told him how much i loved it. my cousin jamie, that i mentioned above, runs a record company called blood & ink records of which i am hugely proud of him. so he gave me a blood & ink t-shirt in exchange for one of my homemade cheesecakes which he adores. we actually worked this bargain out the day of my grandma's funeral so there was no question as to what either of us would be getting. my parents outdid themselves by giving me a beautiful mystic fire topaz set that included a ring with a cushion cut stone, flanked by two small diamonds, matching earrings, and a matching necklace. they also each gave me a cookie jar. this is the one my daddy gave me. it's much more gorgeous in person. it's handpainted and different parts of the jar are textured. it's a very well made jar. and inside it were two fifty dollar gift cards to books-a-million. yay for gift cards to the bookstore! my aunt also gave me a twenty dollar gift card to walmart which i will use to purchase my next set of contacts. oh, and my bosses at work gave all the team leads a twenty five dollar gift card to (where else) target. oh, daddy just came to tell me that there has been a winter storm advisory posted. for snow. lots and lots of snow. well, i'm off. i've been writing this entry now for close to fifty minutes and i think it's time to go find some dinner and get these gifts put away. i have to be at work at six again in the morning so i'll want to get to bed early if possible. it'll be crazy return day for all retail employees. merry christmas and toodles 5:22 pm - 25 Dec 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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