still talking about christmas...

so after waking up after christmas eve eve's late night, it was time to get all christmassy.

i always spend christmas eve with my dad's side of the family and then christmas day with my ma's side. it works out pretty well.

anyways, this year i wrapped all of my gifts with some homemade paper:

it was fun. i love the whole process of wrapping presents and i must say i am pretty good at folding all of those little corners.

we open presents and then head off to church. this year, we took too long and by the time we rolled up to the happening first lutheran, all of the seats were taken. all that remained were the ones in the side room with the big tv projection of the service. this seemed like a bad place to sit, but we eventually made ourselves comfortable.



once things started up, however, we realized that there was no sound coming from the speakers. we couldn't hear anything at all for the entire time. no choirs made up of little kids that can't sing, no bell ringers, no anything.

at first it was annoying, but then i looked over at my dad and we just started laughing at how ridiculous it was. once it was over it was time to rally the family together for the big christmas eve feast.

that's my pops and i arriving.

it's always a fun night because i get to hang out with all of my cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. plus you get to eat a lot. plus you get some more presents...


here's me and cousin christopher. he might be sleeping.

and here's the activity in the basement (this all takes place at the nybakken's house by the way):

awww yeah! bumper pool!

i hadn't played this game for about a hundred years. it is pretty fun, even though i lost to curtis after giving him a serious comeback scare. next year cousin, next year.


the sister and pops and i.

that night curtis gave me some presents. one present i hold especially dear to my heart:

awwww yeah! behold my new, ahem...black leather von dutch hat. ha ha. i have been sassing curt for years about the one time i caught him wearing a vd beanie and this was his revenge. it was pretty awesome.

by this time, it was late. time for my sister and i to head on down to my mother's house for the next day's events.

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when i woke up on christmas morning, it was beeeeeeeaaauuuutiful outside:

there were big, fat snowflakes slowly falling to the ground and no wind.

i think that i was the first one awake this year. for the first time ever. it was fun to have the house to myself for a bit.

once everyone was up though, it was time for breakfast. this year we had caramel rolls and fruit.

god, it's soo tasty. i should make some of them for my nyc pals. mmmmmmmm....

after breakfast, it was time to get to the presents. my mother is insane, wrapping some presents three times, with boxes within boxes. it's really fun. and it takes a looong time. definitely over an hour this year. here is the aftermath:

hooray for presents!

so the rule of the day at our house is a good one: nobody can, at any point in the day, change out of their pajamas into real clothes. it's the best.

with this in mind, what is left to do other than play some boardgames? we started with clue and ended with poker and darts. coincidentally, we started drinking during the first game of clue, so by the time we got to the darts, it was pretty hilarious. my team lost every single game.

and i was the first to run out of money during the poker.

o well.

to wrap things up (read: sober things up), we have dinner.

we had shrimp and a million other things. mmmm.....

the rest of the day was spent playing with our new toys. actually, i spent most of my time setting up all of the ipods that everyone else got. o well...

(oh, and by the way...nobody even came close on the whole guessing how much i spent on chocolate at christmas-time thing. the amount was $110. so, sorry, but no lucky winner of the 'Scooters!' book this time! hee hee.)