Christmas Past

I was going through some of my old pictures, and I found the ones from me and Trevor's first Christmas as a married couple in 2006. It made me feel so much better about what I was sure to be a trashy Christmas for eachother on Thursday. We've had worse; we can handle it.

And the more I think about it, the more I remember we found gifts this year that really mean something, so I'm feeling pretty good now.

Ugly Sweater Parties

I know, I'm so out of the loop. But I just read about this awesome thing called an Ugly Sweater Party :) I want to do one.

This girl I know has a pretty funky blog and she put up a picture from what I think was her Ugly Sweater Party. Look see http://thisismablogbrittany.blogspot.com/2008/12/happy-christmas.html. I sure hope it's okay to share her blog... Maybe if I shower her with compliments she won't mind. She is pretty good at photo taking and creating on her own. You will like her.

Ugly Sweater Parties
December 14, 2008 by clander
Over the course of a calendar year, white people have ample opportunities for themed parties and drinking: Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, and Cinco De Mayo are the most popular officially sanctioned holidays. But that does not mean that white people shy away from creating their own impromptu themes for parties and evenings- mustache party! ’90s prom! Designing Women!
During the month of December, white people face an especially difficult challenge. This is the time of year when parties and drinking are most appropriate, but the most obvious theme of Christmas must be avoided. This is because Christmas forces Christianity upon others, and though their ancestors had no problem with this activity, modern white people are quite disgusted by the idea. Hanukkah parties are fun, but a bit too exclusive, and a Kwanzaa Party requires an enormous amount of physical, mental, and ironic labor that can only be done by the most elite of white people.
White people needed to find a party that was completely without religious affiliations, but still connected enough to the idea of Christmas that they could serve eggnog and hot toddies. The answer: ugly sweater parties.
These parties feature festive drinks, Christmas music by Sufjan Stevens, and most importantly, intentionally hideous sweaters. These ugly sweaters provide white people with an invisible shield that protects them from any criticism that might emerge if any Christianity accidentally slips into the evening.
“Hey man, I love that Burl Ives song, but um, you let Silent Night slip into the mix. That’s kind of awkward because, you know, the Crusades?”White person points to sweater and makes a funny face.Order is restored.
If you find yourself invited to one of these parties, you must begin your preparations immediately. Craftier white people have been searching used clothing stores since last Christmas, and so you should not expect to find anything of significant ironic value. Instead, your best hope is to see if any of your family members have an old sweater lying around.
“Hey man, nice sweater. It’s so ugly.”“Yeah, when my family first got to this country we had to shop at Goodwill, this is the first one my father bought to get him through his first winter here. Good thing they didn’t have these parties back then, right? He would have died.”“Geez, man, I’m sorry, you can cut in line for egg nog.”

To do

Chelsea inspired me to write down my goals. There's a lot of rather large happenings around me lately, and I want to take a minute to focus my brain on me and my priorities.

1. Pay off this one loan we have with a certain relative BEFORE summer comes. This seems like a long time when you think about it one way, but if thought of the other way, it seems short. Got it?


2. Find a way for either me or Trevor to start school again. I'm putting no time line on this because I have no idea--and I hate goals I can't accomplish.


3. This one's an addendum to goal #2. If it is me who goes back to school, I want to find a way for me to USE what I'm schooling for. See, I want to be a stay at home mom, and an occupation doesn't really fit into that too well. Besides Mary Kay. Goal #2 and goal #3 are very long term goals. Maybe I shouldn't put them on this list, as they will be on it too long for me to enjoy it.


4. Go 2 weekends in a row without spending over $20 total. (And then NOT spend more the next weekend to compensate for not spending a lot the other two weekends.)


5. Starting in January (haha) get to church 4 out of 4 weeks. INCLUDING Relief Society. It's a warzone there. (I'm already feeling a pinch here...)


6. Finish reading Robert Jordan's book 1 of The Wheel of Time by January 15th. Trevor asked me to read it. I agreed, with a slight assumption that I would be able to use it later to persuade him to read Twilight--if nothing else, Midnight Sun. This is a very very uneven exchange--The Wheel of Time is 12 intense novels long; Twilight is jr. high level reading and 4 books long.


7. Get Trevor to read Twilight. (Okay, I know that's not a realistic goal to put on MY list.)


8. Follow THE budget.


9. Make something crafty to give away. Soon.


10. And to make it an even 10...Read scriptures and pray every night for 2 weeks.
    

I think that gives me a good range of goals to accomplish. Some are very immediate and short term, others are more long term. I wish I had them split into two lists: long term and short term. Oh well.

Oh darn, I thought of another important one. Let's call this one 7.5 because #7 doesn't count

7.5. Dwell on reasons I love Trevor and think of ways to improve our relationship or be kinder to eachother every night before prayer. I think every one should do this with one person.

Woot!

Trevor's Early Present

These are the place settings Trevor got me.

Christmas Fixin's

Here's our tree this year.

We miraculously got some lights to go up around the dining room table.

I tried to cram as much stuff onto the lazy susan as possible.

We put these up every year and light them. They were Trevor's family's when he was younger and we inherited them (not sure if anyone else knows that :)...)

I got this advent calendar this year. It's the opposite of the other one we have. I like to see how many days UNTIL Christmas, not just how many days have passed since December started. I like the candy cane :)

We got some window cling things and put them on our mirror.

I love our tree way too much. It has pine cones!

We made gingerbread men. We gave all the ones away that were decorated nicely before taking pictures. They taste good no matter what though.

Way too long, and December thus far.

It's been way too long. So much has happened, but I don't really feel like recapping everything. As of today the holidays are equally good and bad. I'm sure all of the next few sentences are going to seem random to everyone, but .. .oh well. Money is a horrible notion and I'll forever hate it (because I know I'll never have enough of it to love it). I thought this holiday season was going to be one like we've never been able to experience yet... nope. We are very grateful we have enough to get things for our families though. I feel very blessed to have a family that we can celebrate Christmas with. I'm looking forward to the time on Christmas day when we can visit with everyone. Snow is scary and cold; but I hope it keeps snowing like this for Christmas. It'd be so entirely lame if it stopped snowing just in time for Christmas.

I've been delivering fresh French pastries to our clients for work for the last 2 days, and I still have 2 or 3 more days to go. I hope I can get it all done before Christmas Eve. They smell so good in the morning--and then I'm crammed into the car with them all day--very hard to resist :) Lucky for us though, yesterday we had some that I couldn't deliver...

I've missed Trevor a lot lately. He's been forced to work a rediculous amount the last few weeks. I guess with the holidays and all... He's supposed to be getting promoted to Assistant Manager, but who knows when that will actually happen. If you've never experienced inter-office politics, don't try. The Man only works in your favor if you don't deserve it. He's been working late almost every night. His band practice schedule has gotten all screwed up too because of it, but they still need to fit in 2 a week if possible. He's coming with me to deliver pastries today, and I'm SOOOOO looking forward to it. (The amount of "O"s in my "so" should tell you how excited I am; I haven't used multiple "O"s since, like, 8th grade.) We haven't been able to spend any quality time together--and the times we force it, we're both too tired because it's midnight. We have been eating lunch together as often as we can though--and it has really helped (although, it has NOT helped our budget... catch 22). You know, sometimes we don't get along, and we disagree on big things sometimes, but geeze, I love the man. A few weeks ago he brought home Christmas plates for my dining room table (I say MY dining room table because it IS mine. He knows it. I decorate it, and set it up nice. It makes me happy), with snowmen and penguins, and matching cups and placemats. He'd heard me mentioning that one day I wanted to be able to decorate my table for Christmas... such a sweetie. I bet none of you really knew Trevor has a soft spot. Sorry none of you get to see it as often as I do--but I don't feel that bad :) I get Trevor :) Ha ha! And a few days ago he started using extra smiley faces in his texts! Totally caught me off guard. He sometimes has used the regular smileys, like :) and frownies like :( But he's never gone beyond that. They always seemed just outside the bounds of normality for him. But then he sent me a :P ... HAHA! Did you seriously just stick your tongue out at me?! Before I got that text, I was always kind of annoyed at extravagant smileys. Somehow Trevor pulled it off and made it work though.

My time home alone has not been unproductive though. I used my time ever so wisely and read the Twilight series a few weeks ago. Highly important. I've said this before, but I can't believe how much I got sucked in. I'm a fan now. I know it's sort of a shallow silly story, but I really felt empowered and uplifted by it. It made me want to be a better spouse for Trevor and a much more selfless in all my interactions with people. Made me realize the importance of being with the one you love forever.

A'right. Happy Christmas everyone! Off to do more deliveries.

ugh

I can't believe I'm saying this, but HOLY CRAP. I'm like 3 chapters into New Moon and I think MY heart is getting ripped out. I hate this story.