Spending time with the family, when you thought it would be a year again until you saw them, has been really nice. Our days have been spent going to coffee shops and restaurants, walking (when my knee lets me), Christmas cookie baking, the occasional gym session and a lot of Christmas shopping! The nights are passed with competitive games of Stop the Bus, Apples to Apples and our personal favourite, Bananagrams (think a better version of scrabble), where not a night goes past without the excited shouts of "BANANAS" and "PEEL" and the desperate cries of "No, i'm telling you 'shibzing' is a word!" My brother-in-laws parents came up from Portland to visit for a couple of days and brought with them a game that incorporated a hilarious round of charades...
In my mind if you don't do a full on proper Christmas, there is no point. Guess who started the petition for a real Christmas tree and saw the 4 'kids' going to a couple of different stalls around town to pick the best one, tie it to the roof of the car and drive ssllloowwwlly home? One thing that I did let slide was the fact that we didn't have a fairy for the tree, but I was quite taken with our gnome. He sat on our tiny, fake tree, while the rocking horse sat on the main event.
On Christmas eve a few of us went on the West Seattle Christmas Light tour which involved a map with the locations of people houses who had taken my idea of a big Christmas to the extreme, a car, a camera, and in some cases sunglasses to protect the eyes from a visual onslaught. The first few got the response of "Look a life-size santa riding a polar bear, aww that's nice", and one flashing light display on a house that instructed you to tune your car radio to a specific station and the lights flashed along in time to the music. However one in particular quite literally outshone all the others combined! There were so many people clustered around it, taking photos, pointing and 'wowing' at various parts of the creation, that you couldn't miss it. The house glowed. I wouldn't be surprised if you could see it from space. I overheard the son of the owner of the house saying it took 6 people over 100 hours to set it all up. Again, feeling more and more like my dad, the only question I wanted to ask was "How much is your electricity bill?!" This tour only served to remind me that I am in America. The same display in England would have been scoffed at, grumbled at, maybe the local council would have received a few complaints about light pollution or something. But here was a family just embracing the Christmas spirit (maybe a bit too excessively) for others to enjoy.
Christmas day brought lots of shredded wrapping paper and lots of food as one might expect. I videoed my mums reaction as she opened up her kindle and debated putting it on here. I won't but there were a few tears! One of my favourite gifts was from my aunty, who had knitted me a little killer whale! I thought it was so sweet! A lot of clothes were received by the boys and we all got pictures of them modelling them. It was a chance to show their feminine side. Or their Hugo Boss catalog posing side. All in all, a great Christmas:)
I have another 10 days until I fly back to California and in that time we have a wedding and New Year's. There should be some work being done at some point. But i'll wait until 2012 I think!
No comments:
Post a Comment