Christmas Day

Simple and perfect. That was our Christmas this year.

Over the past couple of years we have started to tone down the whole gift giving thing. We all generally have everything we need and we shop for ourselves throughout the year. Nobody needs more 'stuff'.

Our Christmases have become more about the visits and the family than they are about the gifts. We still do the gifts, of course, but we set some pretty reasonable limits and get things for each other that are mostly practical. We also share lists with each other of what we'd like for Christmas and I have to say that we even dubbed this year "Operation get what you want (no surprises)", because we shopped with each other for some things and even bought them under each other's noses. I think out of all my presents this Christmas day, I only received 2 or 3 surprises. And I'm thrilled. It is so nice asking for what really want and then receiving exactly that.

Our morning started out at my mom and stepdad's. I got there at 10 and ST showed up at 10:30. We had tea and juice and listened to Christmas music and had a good visit before opening our gifts. We used to go crazy overboard with gift giving and the piles of presents would barely diminish after an hour of opening. It would be overwhelming and you'd have too much stuff to really appreciate what you got. Weeks later you would still have bags of gifts sitting in your apartment that you hadn't unpacked yet. It was just all too much.

This year it was perfect. We opened presents and passed things around to see up close what everyone else got. We read the children's book my sister bought for my mom. An enchanting and lovely story called Brave Irene, about a young girl delivering a dress that her mom made, to the Duchess through the snow and wind. We flipped through my new cookbook figuring out how to sneak pureed vegetables into every food possible. We calibrated our pedometers, laughed over an upside down page in a homemade calendar (oops), cheered over a paper shredder, moisturizer, a tide to go stick and our favourite tv shows on dvd. We hugged and shed a tear or two and sat down to a breakfast of poached eggs toast and bacon with our stepbrother who had just arrived.

After breakfast we sat admiring the tree, visiting and drinking our coffee and tea until it was time to go to grandpa's.

At my Grandpa's we visited and snacked on delicious food. Pickled asparagus, olives, nuts and bolts, and chocolates. We sat around in the living room with the fire burning and it felt so peaceful and nice. My other sister and her fiance arrived with his daughter and we had our gift exchange with them before dinner.

Dinner was great and we skipped dessert this year because we are always too full from dinner anyways to really enjoy anything else. We played a couple rounds of apples to apples, while people started to make their exits in small pairings...first my cousins, then LT and J-Dub, next my aunt and uncle and finally the rest of us.

We drove home singing along with a couple of Christmas carols on the radio until one came on that I couldn't stand and we remembered our gift from LT, a cd case full of mixed cd's she made us. Off go the carols and in goes Justin vs. Britney. We sang along and out came the cheesy dance moves.

All in all, a perfect Christmas day!