It was a very merry Christmas yesterday. The morning church service was full of singing. I loved it! After church, we gathered at my parents’ house for dinner and for opening some presents. My brother and sister’s families had already had Christmas at their houses. Electronics were a big hit this year. This scene cracked me up:
We had ham for dinner. It was delicious! I love ham. I also love that my niece Rachel had four drinks in front of her, because that’s just like me. I like having water, milk, wine, coffee, tea… I would have had more drinks, but I was trying to seem restrained for some reason. I shouldn’t have.
After dinner, we opened presents. It was a lot of fun. Since I am saving money for my move, I decided to only give presents that I could find in my basement. It was a ton of fun. I think it could be a really fun party to have everyone give gifts from their basement, or wherever they store things.
By Request, the gifts I brought from my basement:
Mom: a story I started writing in Seattle and never finished
Dad: a box of matches from The Copper Cellar, a restaurant they liked in Knoxville, TN
Brent: an old Mad Magazine “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” book
Sandra: a funny picture of Brent when he was in high school
Rachel: a plug-in light fixture with a blacklight in it
Alicia: a silver quarter and silver dime that I wrote about here
Daniel: a blue silk tuxedo jacket
Anna: a box of stuff you put in the bathtub and it makes the water gel-like
Harold: a plastic octopus you can rub on someone’s back and massage them
Beth: a bunch of chemical hand warmers
Tara: a friendship bracelet I’ve had since I taught in Seattle
Tim: some temporary tattoos
What a joyful day! I am so glad that your family got to have some. Christmas time with you before you go away and learn a bunch of island traditions. Next year you’ll want them to hollow out pineapples for hot cocoa, huh? (I’m certain that’s a thing – don’t bother fact-checking.)
Yay! Sounds like so much fun! And so jealous of the ham! I love ham too….and I didn’t have any.
So come on, share us with us some of the awesome basement presents!
(Guess what I got? Guess what I got? Yup!)
I’ve added the list at the end of the post.
What did you get?
So how did you fly to NE with the water heater from your basement? And aren’t they challenging to wrap?! And now what will Max and Denis do without one?!?!
Oh.
…so we’d only’ve been able to provide opened cans of paint, outdated computer hardware, and many plastic tubs of things salvaged from past basement floods. Somehow, those don’t sound like very goood gifts either. You must have had awesome stuff stashed away in yours, Brad.