The Christmas Toy*

Woo boy my arms and shoulders ached the day after my yoga class last week! It was a good, sore muscle ache though. I have the bad kind of pain in my back, shoulders, arms regularly so it was refreshing to have meaningful pain. That sounds weird I guess. My next class should be on Jan 6th and I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm basically done with my gift shopping. But I have a lot to wrap. I bought C a bunch of things that fit together in a theme (kitchen/baking stuff) and I'm going to wrap each one individually. I bought her the cutest set of measuring spoons - I have to take a pic before I wrap them up.  C and I went in on a bunch of cooking/baking stuff for my other sister (S) too. I hope C doesn't mind having very similar presents! I'm sure she'll be happy with what I got her but it gives me a twinge of guilt that I wasn't more unique. I still have one very small thing to buy for C and I need to stop and get a gas station gift cert for S because she's a poor grad student. All presents are bought for my mom. R bought gifts for his mom and dad but they still need to be wrapped (by me). And that's it. R and I don't usually buy gifts for each other. He is extremely difficult to buy for unless I have thousands of dollars to buy him a camaro or some sort of new electronic device. The small thoughtful gifts are just not his style. We save the money we would have spent on each other and eventually buy something for our house instead.

We didn't put up lights again this year and we never bothered to get a tree. We both like the decorations but it just didn't happen. I used to be really into Christmas but not so much anymore. Christmas without children to share it with just isn't the same. We don't have any kids in either of our families and our few friends don't have kids either. I do like giving gifts though - it's fun to get someone what they want/need.

I did get to buy a toy for someone this year though! I bought it for a family our company sponsored for the holidays who have an infant that needs a kidney transplant. They also have a 2 yr old and I figured this thing would be great for both of them to use. It was so cute. I haven't bought a baby toy in a long, long time.

All our snow has melted. I don't think it will be a white Christmas. It would be nice to have some snow but please, don't snow on Thursday. We will be traveling to and back home from my mom's house (~2 hours each way) that day, as is our tradition, and bad weather would just make it annoying. Not that we couldn't handle it. We have a 4 wheel drive vehicle and R is a very good driver. Christmas day we are off to MIL's house (only ~ 15 mins away) in the afternoon so if it had to snow, that would be the ideal day. Have I ever mentioned how crazy my MIL is? I don't think I have. If there are any bizarre presents from her this year I need to remember to take pics of them. Corn on the cob handles anyone? Or how about a purple, plastic trash can? No? Then how about a staple puller and some blank diskettes? Oh it just goes on and on.

*One of my fondly remembered childhood Christmas movies. C and I were discussing this on Sunday (while baking about 4 different kinds of cookies for the holidays because it is one of our holiday traditions - frosted sugar cookies, gingerbread men, chocolate orange crinkles, and sugar-cookie-chocolate-peppermint bark) and now I really want to see it again! Maybe I'll order it on DVD. Whoa! I just looked and someone has put the entire movie up - the first part is HERE. I don't know if it's good quality but I'm off to watch it now!