Merry Christmas!!

Hello my dear readers, tis the day after Christmas in the land of Far Far Away (aka Cambodia). Presents have been unwrapped, cookies have been devoured, movies have been watched.... And now it is Boxing Day. But you want to hear about Christmas, don't you? Well...

On Christmas Eve, Kristine, Abby, and I made lots and lots of gingerbread cookies. We had a wonderful time. Later that night Tim and Tiffany came over. We had an amazing Christmas dinner--lasagna, salad, and garlic bread--and then we watched The Nativity Story and ate cookies. Lots of cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. We had gingerbread cookies, russian teacakes, molasses sugar cookies, peanut-blossoms, lemon-bars, and these little chocolate cookie things that I fail to remember what they were called. The Nativity Story was a great choice to watch on Christmas Eve. It really brought to live Jesus' birth, and also what it must have meant to Mary and Joseph... They threw away so much, everything they had spent their entire lives working for, when they said "yes" to God. People don't really think about what they faced. I also enjoyed how the movie portrayed the three Wise Men. Of course, Caleb started calling them the "Three Tourists", which was rather humorous. The Nativity Story was a very good movie, and a very good way to remember what Christmas is all about. Just as the movie finished the doorbell rang and we heard the sounds of voices singing Christmas carols! They sang several songs to us, and then gave us minced pies, mints, and toffees. The full moon was out and Mars, just as promised, was shining brightly. I suddenly felt very Christmassy. We went back inside and talked--as well as eating more cookies. Yes, more cookies. After Tim and Tiffany left, us kids stuck our presents for the family under the tree, and headed upstairs.

It was almost entirely dark. A small stream of light shone through the window. I woke up, feeling excited. Suddenly I started shaking all over. Was it Christmas morning? I jumped up, out of my bed, and turned to look at my phone. Was it morning? 1:00 am. I sighed and went back to bed. Not morning yet...

Finally I woke up and it was morning. Christmas morning. I got out of bed, brushed my teeth, and then Kristine came into my room. We snuck downstairs, our eyes grew wide as we saw the many presents under the tree. We each found our stockings--stuffed to the brim. Then we saw a light in the living room. Mom was awake! This is highly unusual. Normally Kristine and I are the first people up on Christmas morning. In the end, Kristine and I went in the living room (instead of our bedrooms), and opened our stockings there. There were lots of things in my stocking, but here are some of the highlights:

• Little "dinosaur eggs" that "hatch" when put under water for several days
• Lots of soap and facewash (all scented)
• Enough candy to last me until next Christmas
• Mini-origami paper to make cranes and stars
• Little cats that you can keep rings on their tails

There was other stuff as well, but those were some of the stocking highlights. After waiting for about half an hour, Mom went and woke up Caleb. He stumbled out of bed, his hair a complete mess, exclaimed "It's Christmas!" and headed for his stocking. After a few minutes Dad came out, and soon we were ready to open our presents. We took turns, like we usually do--although this time it was a bit more orderly than normal. Caleb's gifts consisted of mostly bionicles, model cars, and other building things. Kristine got quite a bit of jewelry, some horsey stuff, and a new purse and wallet. Mom got some jewelry, a table-runner, and a few other little things. And Dad got chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Oh! And he also got an i-pod nano. I got quite a few presents as well, and since I like making little bullet-points of all the presents I got, here are some of the highlights:

• A green and black dragon beanie-baby-type-thing
• A ring and pendant with garnets in them
• Little earrings shaped like reindeer (Thank you Pop-O and G.G.!)
• A silk black and silver purse
• A dark blue wallet made out of a fishbag
• A beautiful set of Prismacolor colored pencils
• A plastic triceratops
• A gorgeous clay box with a butterfly on the top (Thank you Hannah!!)
• A Sculpey-making book (thank you Abby!!)
• A sudoko game
• A 1 gb memory stick (Yayayayay!!)
  
• There was other stuff, too, but those were the highlights. Oh, I also got an early present from Meow, two books, one was How to Write Science-Fiction (it had Darth Vader on the cover and Spock on the back!!!), and the other was How to Write Fantasy (Gandalf was on the cover!!!). Lots of lovely presents...

After we opened the presents we watched a few movies (those soppy Christmas movies that have to do with dogs and mean adults that I really don't care for), so I went on the computer (on Christmas, yes, I was on the computer--mostly messing with my memory stick as well as chatting with a few people). We ate tuna sandwiches and cookies (yes, more cookies!!) for lunch, and then for dinner we had chicken and scalloped potatoes. Yum yum.

Overall it was a lovely Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone!!