Merry Christmas! All was well

Merry Christmas!
All was well in Sarah-land for the holiday. Dad made it home late and David overslept, so the breakfast crowd was a little smaller than usual: Mom, Brian, Grandmother, Tomas, and me. Tomas is Brian’s friend who didn’t have enough vacation to go home for the holiday (he’s from Panama), so he spent it with us. We even got him a couple presents.
David and Dad were both here by 10:30 and the present-opening began. I wonder if our family does it calmer than most — we take turns rather than opening everything all at once. We go around the room in a circle each opening one present and repeating until everyone is done with all of theirs. Katie always wins the present battle; she’s always the last one with any left. With her spending the holiday in Seattle with Joel’s family, I was able to sneak in and take the “most presents” title, beating Brian by one. David, as the one with the least presents, won the title of “most expensive present” with a very nice pair of Bose headphones. 🙂
All of my gifts were well-received. I gave Katie a homemade calendar, and the boys and I got together to give her an mp3 player. Joel got a backpacking stove from me (which he might trade for a larger, sturdier version). Mom got exercise pants and a homemade calendar as well. Dad got a book (“The Tipping Point”) and a Starbucks gift card. Grandmother got an amaryllis and chocolates, two of her standard gifts. (As she says, “I already have everything!”) Brian got an REI gift card, headphones, and a book (“Let My People Go Surfing”). David got an iTunes gift card and the Firefly DVDs.
This is the best — I bought David the Firefly DVDs not knowing if he’d even seen the show, but thinking that he would like it. On Thursday night while Katie and Joel were opening presents, David turns to me and says “hey, have you heard of that show Firefly?” Laughing inside, I say “yes.” He says he liked the movie, and had been watching the TV episodes on Sci-Fi channel, and that he’d seen the DVD set at Best Buy that day and almost bought it. I make every attempt to be totally stealth and offhandedly say “oh, well you can get it after Christmas or borrow mine.” Last night he again mentioned it, and pondered using Amazon gift cards to buy it. Mom and I very stealthily nudge him away from the purchase. “But it’s not like anyone knows I want it,” he says.
Luckily he didn’t buy it last night, and we all had a good laugh when he opened the DVDs today. I love it when I am so dead on with someone’s gift. 🙂
As for me, what did I get? Plenty! A backpacking stove, a couple shirts, an ornament. A zip-it purse — it’s a purse made entirely out of a zipper — it is incredibly funny and cool — who comes up with this stuff?? A bunch of books (including a cool one on digital sports photography), a Barnes & Noble card to buy more books, a Starbucks card, two DVDs (“Batman Begins” and the “Apollo 13” 10th anniversity edition), and some money from Grandmother (1.4x extender here I come). Brian won bonus points this year with his gifts to me — a black pearl necklace from China and a calendar that he put together online full of photos from his trip there in October. He even took the time to put captions on each one! It might be my favorite present of all this year, partly because it was so unexpected and yet so cool.
We had a lazy afternoon enjoying our presents, and Mom and I went to see Chronicles of Narnia tonight at the theater. I’d already seen it, but knew Mom would love it so I was more than happy to go see it again. I still need to see King Kong.
I didn’t go running today, and won’t tomorrow (we’ll be busy all day with the big family lunch with Aunt Nancy in Chapel Hill). But Tuesday is the day for 12 miles…