This is a christmas entry.

I realised the other day that I have yet to write about christmas in Adelaide last year. This bothers me a great deal, because there is no way I can write about it properly after such time, especially with pregnancy brain and now that another christmas has passed. Yikes. I am too slack for my own good.

Heheheh, slacks.

Anyhoot, this past weekend was LOVELY. I love spending time with my Jake. On Saturday/xmas eve, we baked. We made brownie muffins, and Jake did quite a lot to help out rather than his usual of just melting the butter (which is awesome, because I get distracted normally and forget about the butter until it starts to make a noise). He mixed everything together, and when it was time to dish out the goo (too firm for a batter, so it is goo. Seems wrong but it sounds amusing and that is what matters!) he held the trays in place for me so I could swirl each glob around and make them more… muffin-shaped. Then we put on some christmas music and made gingerbread cookies! I rolled the dough out and used my lovely collection of cookie cutters, Jake was in charge of oven-ing. Which was great – when I made the cookies by myself I ended up making the inside of the oven mitts disgusting from my flour-and-dough covered hands and the heat of the oven melting it inside the mitts. It also made the whole process WAY more fun, and much quicker.

Sunday morning was absolutely FREEZING (Jake came back to bed when I woke up, rugged up in his giant hoodie and sweatpants, because he was cold outside of the bed), but by midday is was nice, and stayed that way well into the evening. And by nice I mean… above freezing.

Because Jake had already eaten by the time I was up and wanting breakfast, I let him open one present. He picked a book, which is awesome because that gave him something to do while I ate and woke up to the point of wanting to open the rest of the presents. Jake is such a practice-kid sometimes. I love it.

After Jake gave me my presents from him (that I picked out/made), we went outside to take pictures of the giant ornaments on the giant christmas tree that lives next to the bank we live near. I wanted something similar to a photo I took 2 years ago, but without the snow is just looks kinda boring. And also, my camera was being a bitch and kept freezing when I took really good photos, because there was too much detail or something stupid. Stupid camera.

  

Next on our fun list of things to do was decorate the baked goods from the day before! After what seemed like forever, I made a suitably thick icing to dunk the brownie muffins in. Jake then put a cherry nerd on top of each of them. It turns them into pretend puddings and makes them look christmassy, I think. With the leftover icing, I had LOTS of fun decorating all the gingerbread. The picture on the left is the ‘sensible’ decorated ones, the ones that were for a gift. I really like the gingerbread men, I think they are extra cute. After that, I started to be silly because they were only going to be for us. I made Jake and I a gingerbread person each, as well as a star and christmas tree. I really like me as a gingerbread lady, I think I’m cute. Plus I like my angry kitty star. Then it was time for the tiny things. I see… sad cyclops, super-happy cyclops with messed up buttons, snowman with a moustache and scarf but no eyes, screaming gingerbread man in a peacoat, snowman with no face, gingerbread man in a scarf (my absolute favourite!), gingerbread lady with boobs, and happy cyclops. By the time I was done, everything was sticky, and there was only a little bit of icing left… so I ate it. I think that was technically my lunch for the day.

A little after 3, Lisa and Matt showed up here with a big ass box that was our christmas present. It’s a crib! One that I get to put together! Yay! (I’m still super-amused that the style I picked shares my name.) They also gave us their old crock pot, so now I have to things of ways to use that. We sat around not doing much until a touch after 4, when we headed over to Kristen’s place for dinner and presents and all the good things that are family gatherings at christmastime.

Dinner was ‘italian beef’ which seemed to just be hunks of beef slow-cooked in a tomatoey sauce. Lisa also made me some breaded chicken tenders because I don’t eat beef. And there was pasta. So I had pasta with some of the beefy tomato sauce on top and a piece or two of chicken. The chicken tasted beefier than the sauce did, it was so very odd.

As usual, at dinner time with this family, there is always what could possibly be refered to as ‘couple’s therapy’, wherein one couple mentions something offhand and Lisa starts talking forever (and quite loud, she was sitting next to me and I actually had to tell Nick etc to stop making her yell because it was hurting my ear) about how things should be done. Whenever this happens, Jake and I just look at each other and try not to look smug. There has not been an issue yet that we can relate to. Sometimes it is because of his memory (so I don’t just assume he remembers stuff, I remind him a lot) or because he can’t drive (so he can’t be off hanging with friends when I want to spend time with him) but sometimes it is just because we are awesome. Which we totally are.

After dinner, it was time for presents!  We had already gotten our gift, but we still got something to unwrap. A cute little pile of clothes for our little one (Matt, the family documenter, missed me opening it, and I had no arm-room so I wasn’t going to take everything out and show it around, so Nick did. So there are pictures of Nick modelling baby girl clothes on his belly as if there was a baby in him. Amusing. Hopefully one day soon I get those photos). We also all got stockings from the parents. In mine, there was a Red Robin gift card, and 3 boxes of Junior Mints (I later found out – 1 for me, 2 for baby. Which was even funnier when I started eating the first box and baby was jumping around from the deliciousness!). Jake got almost m&ms and… a giant xmas blanket, which came in a seperate giant stocking and looked so odd. It’s a lovely warm blanket, I keep wrapping myself up in it and then almost falling asleep because it is like being in bed. Mmm…. bed.

Next up was a gift exchange thing that I don’t know what it is called. We all brought a $20 gift and then took a playing card and went highest to lowest to pick gifts. I got some cute dishtowels and a nestle cookbook. Jake got a movie gift card (which is a super score, we can have dinner and a movie date without having to pay for it now! And I recently got a $25 starbucks giftcard from a survey program thing I do, so we can get a desserty drink or something from there and have a super cheap but awesome date. ROCK). The gifts we gave were themed – one was ‘winter’, a super soft blanket and a bottle of hot cocoa mix. The other was ‘gingerbread’ – a gingerbread scented candle, a gingerbread spatula, and a tin of homemade gingerbread. Lias got the gingerbread gift, and she doesn’t bake, so she gave me the spatula. I have been eyeing those things for the last few years (they are only in the stores at xmas time) but I didn’t need it so didn’t get myself one. Now I have one! YAY! I don’t know if I’d ever really use it (the gingerbread I made this year, I took them off the hot baking trays with my fingers. Probably would be smarter to use a spatula but… meh) but I don’t care, it was a gift and it is cool and awesome-looking.

There was a bit of dessert, and then we came home. Long day, but lovely. So weird to do the big family christmas thing ON christmas, but it was great too. It made the day feel more like a holiday, rather than just Jake and I giving each other a few gifts and eating a dinner of something we wouldn’t normally eat.