Inconsequential Knowledge of Disaster & Catastrophe

I know, I know. Cliche title for this entry but so what..cuz it's true! I am already beat. I took Jenn to work this morning and then went to *gasp* Wal-Mart on *gasp* Christmas Eve to pick up my last present for Jenn. I thought that I was done last night. WRONG. And technically I wasn't even done after Wal-Mart today but close enough.

I went shopping after band practice (the practice is something I'll get into after Christmas entries are posted) and that took forever as one can imagine on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon/evening which just so happened to be the day before Christmas Eve. So it was quite hectic with the waiting in line but I am sure that I am preaching to the choir on most of this if you were someone that did any amount of shopping but didn't have the money to do it all at once last month..much like myself.

I cleaned a lot today. My car. Clean. The chairs in the living room. Clean. Present Table. Clean. Was going to vacuum the entire apartment but I could find only the too-large sized bags and not the ones that actually fit in our vacuum. So maybe I can do it later if we can find the bags.

I am going to try to take several pictures tonight/tomorrow of the presents now, when they're put out and pictures of everyone opening stuff. Between Jenn and myself I'm sure we'll get it all! I am very, very, very excited for quite a few of the presents I bought for people to be opened! Hopefully there'll be tons of happiness.

In a little over an hour we're going to my Aunt and Uncle's for our traditional Christmas Eve get together where there's yummy food (I am HOPING that my Uncle Larry made his homemade Swedish Meatballs!) and we discuss...anything we can think of. We didn't always do this but I've really enjoyed it since we did because it gives a mark in Christmas Eve of when stuff happens. Instead of sitting around home until we get tired enough to go to sleep, we go there and come back and it's usually very, very close to bedtime because these get togethers have been known to go to midnight or 1AM a few times.

My mom and Rob will be coming with their presents to be added to our massive pile of them in the morning (hoping for 9am!) and we'll open them and relax...run an audit of what we've received haha And Chad is making breakfast for all of us after he's home from work which will also be around 8:30-9AM.

Then we go to another Aunt and Uncle's (although they are the same side of my family..with the same people as tonight!) around 2:30PM. I am not sure if we'll have dinner and then open presents or the other way around. It has changed over the years.

My grandparents had a house around here and one up in the Poconos (which is the one that they still have now). We would open all of our presents (sometimes my sister would be there. And sometimes not. I miss her.) and then I'd have to wait what seemed to be a semi-eternity for the time to pass until we got to leave for Grandma and Grandpa's. We'd all talk for hours (this was before the Christmas Eve gettogethers so there was a lot more to talk about!) and then have dinner. You can imagine us trying to eat as quickly as we could to get to the presents! Back then we had my Sister, my cousin Jenny, her sister Cristy, my Cousin Laura and her sister Jessica. We'd agonize over the time that the grownups sat around talking at the table after the good was gone! That was no time for dessert!!! Dessert was something that we split up to take home to eat the next day! It should have been present time! We'd open up presents and then spend the rest of the night until it was time to go home playing with all of the cousins with our new toys. The next day was never a school day. Never a work day for us. We had off another week! We'd go to the stores when our parents would take us to spend the gift certificates we'd acrued. There were no "gift cards" back then really.

Fast forward a handfull of years. My Grandparents sold their house down here and moved permanently to their house in/near Jim Thorpe, PA. To make it easier on everyone we started having Christmas night at different Aunts/Unlces' each year since most of us lived rather close. A couple years we went to Jersey as that's where my Aunt Dawn, Uncle Rich, Laura and Jessica lived back then. It was different. But still great! One year (or was it two?) we even had it at the house my mom and I had lived in...which leads into the next part...

For two or three years they decided to have the Christmas night festivities before or after Christmas. One year it was the week before Christmas. While it was great to be together with everyone...maybe you can imagine how different it was after all those years! But I believe that was only one year luckily. But they'd changed it because they felt too rushed with the smaller family morning and then getting ready for that night with everyone coming. And at that point all of us Granchildren were older as there hadn't been any after my cousin Jessica.

Then my Uncle John and Aunt Karen had John (and then Katrina) so there were suddenly younger Grandchildren around. I am not sure if that ended up having anything to do with it or not but thankfully we've gone back to something closer to the traditional event!

I am hoping that when my generation of family starts having children, we can keep it going much like this! My sister (who is 31) will not have Children. My cousin Jen (Jenny...who technically isn't blood related) should have children at some point I'd think...when she's ready. Then there's me. I honestly don't think I'm very, very far away from that myself. My cousin Cristy is probably a pretty good way from it as well. If she decides to have any. But she definitely should as she loves children (she's babysat/nanny'd) for many, many over the years. And I know that she'd make an awesome mom, much like her's. Laura and Jessica are both just in college now and children are most likely WAY, WAY off. So children may be scattered over the future. But I hope that all of us will continue the tradition with everyone just like we do now and then every few years or so a new addition will be added! And hopefully before too long we'll have a nice big place of our own and host a few years ourselves! I am really, really excited about that!! I become a big child and one can tell by how hard I'm "working" on making this year "perfect" hahah Hopefully none of my family members would be offended by mentioning them like I did in the part but I do think about it every now and then. I just want to keep it going because it has been such an incredibly big part of my life. And I am happy that I can bring Jenn into it and hope that it means something close to what it means to me. It might not be her family (yet anyway) but I hope that she feels like she's with her family for when we are away from her family across the country. And when/if we end up out there, I hope that my family here continues to do the same thing so that we still have the same happy warmth to come back to for when we come here for Christmas.

This is all to bring about full understanding of how important this time of year is to me. I know that I missed a couple (had to work one of the years that they had Christmas night the day after Christmas...which even more saddening was at my house that year and living at the other end of the state for another year). But it means oh so much to me. Whenever someone told me what they did for Christmas 95% of the time I would think to myself how glad I am that we do what we do.

But whatever you do. However you do it. And with whomever you share it with...Merry Christmas. Whether it is a devoutly religeous time for you or just a time of family warmth...or anything else, I hope that it's everyone you hope for it to be. And...I hope that you get YOUR Red Rider Range Model Air Rifle.

Merry Christmas, my friends.

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