Christmas 2005

Well, Christmas is finally behind us. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t happy about it. The older I get the less Christmas excites me. It probably has a lot to do with all the crap that comes with the holidays: heavy traffic, traveling, buying lots of gifts, wrapping gifts, working more hours, and on and on.

This year my big gift to Sue was an iPod. I also picked up some accessories for her, but the iPod was the big gift. Her big gift to me was a laptop. Actually, only part of a laptop. I asked everybody for money to help chip in for a laptop. Sue will pick up the balance. I don’t expect to get an expensive one, just one that does what I need. I’m not into computer games as much as I used to be so I don’t need much. Despite getting a laptop she got me a few small things like ties and socks.

Overall Christmas went pretty well. We worked Friday night at the restaurant. I stayed up until 2:30am wrapping presents. I got up at 8:00am on Saturday to help mom and go over to work with Sue. After we worked we had dinner with my parents and opened presents. From there we went over to Sue’s parent’s house to open presents with her sister and brother. It went pretty well despite all the travelling and firm timeframes we had to work with.

Sunday was spent mostly in Mass. We got up at 5:30am on Sunday (to the sound of music dad was playing loudly on the stereo) and were off to Mass. by 7:15am. Our first stop was Sarah and Gerry’s place. We had a great time there. She has plenty of space for us to open presents and is an excellent hostess. She made us some eggnog lattes. Yummy!

From there we left to go to Jane and Mike’s house. We spent a few hours there playing with the dogs, talking with Jane and Mike and seeing Angie and Billy’s new baby Aden. He was 11 days old.

Afterwards we made our way to Sue and Dave’s house. We exchanged gifts with the rest of the family there. As usual it was over crowded and a little confusing. I made it through most of it, but had to get out of the room before I started to panic. Between the heat and closeness I was getting closterphobic.

After all this I drove everybody home. I was wiped out when we got home. The drive was awful. Plenty of cars and nasty wet weather. We slept well Sunday night and made our way over to Sue’s parent’s house again on Monday to watch Feifei open presents. He was asleep by the time we got there on Friday. James had a great time opening presents. You sometimes have to get a tear started, but he can finish opening it by himself. He sometimes bends over while standing putting his butt up in the air. He reminds me of a cat. Too cute!

Anywho, I finally uploaded all the photos from the entire weekend. When I recover enough energy and drive I may add some comments, but here they are in chronological order. I had to break them into 6 groups because I took too many (318 in all). Oh well.