Not Winning Christmas

In keeping with the Christmas pile tradition:

Joe's pile

My pile

Our pile

This year, my mom made everyone stuff. Special awesome stuff. Like the table runner here, and the two pillowcases with Charlie Brown Christmas fabric. Heirloom stuff.

The pink giraffe, sewn by my sister, is a replica of an ornament made for us by one of my grandmas. I think my little sister and I fought over ownership of it at one point, and she won. This year, she made Joe and me these little guys. LOOK WHO WON NOW!

Speaking of winning, my parents compete each year to see who can give the other the best Christmas presents, who will "win Christmas." I guess Joe and I kinda do that too. It's okay for my parents, because their birthdays are in the middle of the year and within a month of each other, but Joe and me...his birthday was three months ago. He got cool stuff. There was nothing cool left to get for him for Christmas, especially since he never wants anything.

That is why my most exciting gifts were a Razer gaming mouse and mousepad and a Razer keybaord, while his most exciting gift was a case of a discontinued flavor of Canada Dry ginger ale.

I don't think there are many gifts we could give each other that would change our lives much. I came to the conclusion that whatever I got Joe, it would be about making his life better while he played video games.

It reminds me of the olden days, Christmas in my family, when we all played together and Christmas gifts were video cards, RAM, and EverQuest expansions.

Annual Shoe Candy

I spent a couple hours of my super-busy Army Wife day yesterday with a thread and needle and a bag of cranberries to make a garland for our Christmas tree. I also made "orangeaments," dried slices of orange with twine threaded through holes at the top, to be hung on the tree. (Last year, I had dried slices of apple as ornaments too, but this year that didn't work out very well so it'll just be the oranges.)

The funny thing about having all these natural ornaments for our Christmas tree is that our tree is made out of plastic and lead.

Anyway. When I was growing up, every year St. Nick - not to be confused with Santa - well, he kind of is, just on a different day - would visit after we went to sleep on the night of December 5th. He'd leave candy in our shoes for us to discover in the morning. I'm pretty sure the reason he visited us and skipped most of the other people in the U.S. (and Korea) is that my mom's family is German, and St. Nick is also German, so he likes us. He still visits me, and now Joe, too.

I got the best of three seasons: Christmas candy, Cadbury creme eggs, and a caramel and marshmallow and chocolate pumpkin. St. Nick knows exactly what my favorites are. I love how the cranberry garland was used to decorate, too.

Joe got a lot less than me, probably because St. Nick thought he'd be happier that way. Just one box of Moose Munch and one Hillshire Farms lunchmeat tupperware full of handmade sugar-free peanut butter cups that tasted like they probably should have been thrown away but St. Nick probably ran out of chocolate after making a second failed batch of them and decided to just go with it. Still, half of the peanut butter things are gone.

Maybe I'll have some candy left by Monday. Probably not. That box of Milk Duds is already empty.

Bathroom Box

That's me in the bathroom of the library on Camp Carroll in South Korea. And that is my second package from home. (The first one was paperwork, and while I send 3 million thanks to my lovely sister for mailing it to me so quickly, the second one didn't have bills in it so is happier.)

When the Post Office guy gave me my box, I had to ask to borrow a pair of scissors. He couldn't find any but instead of saying "Oh, it's okay, nevermind," I just stood there quietly until he went in another room and found some. That was pretty nice of him. I spent like 2 minutes cutting the tape on the box, then whisked it away to the bathroom because I saw packing peanuts in there and you can't just open a box full of packing peanuts in the Post Office parking lot.

Inside the package was a card with my mom's handwriting in it. My mom's handwriting is one of the best things in the world, so familiar and good. Like the smell of coffee brewing in the morning when I'm still tucked in my comfy twin bed in the bedroom in the back of the house (even though that was a long time ago and coffee is gross.) I told her she at least had to stick a Post-It "I love you" in the box. No matter what was in the box, it would've been empty without her handwriting inside.

Also inside the package were MY COOKIES!: Colonial Williamsburg gingerbread cookies. Not three or six, but THIRTEEN HUMONGOUS COOKIES. I've been studying these things for like six years, trying to figure out the secret so I can make them.

You can only buy them at Colonial Williamsburg, but they're so good (and I'm so inconsiderate) that I asked my mom if she and my dad could make the 45-minute trip out there and buy some for me. And they did, they very next weekend.

But there wasn't just cookies and a card and love in there. There were those packing peanuts. I hate packing peanuts because styrofoam makes the earth cry. BUT. These are speeeeeciallllll packing peanuts.

They're made of corn starch or potato starch and they dissolve in water and they're such a wonderful idea and they really should be used in every situation where you need packing peanuts.

I'm eating one of the cookies right now. Dinner is cooking. This blog post made me ruin my dinner.

I have the best family in the world.