Hey everyone, Christmas time is here, time for joy and cheer. My last day of work was December 18th or something and then I was off until January 2nd. There were a lot of fun things that happened this year, and one of the fun things is that mskate worked for santa this year with my mom. I went to see her and my mom one day and it was fun seeing her. I also don't remember exactly when this happened, but at some point we went to see mskate's aunt who is now in assisted living for their holiday party. We got her a stuffed flag heart that is also an ornament. At the little party I sung Christmas song karaoke and did some songs in my goofy voice. That went over well with the residents. Mskate and I also went to see The Nutcracker as presented by the Royal Ballet and Orchestra at fathom events. Review experience here. We also did dinner with the accordion friends early in the vacation before the vacation where we gave them some small presents and one of the call blockers from my grandma's old house.
I think I should start things off with the Christmas party my mom has with her old college friends and their kids on like the 20th. All her friends had kids around the same time, so all of us are around the same age, and back in the day we'd all play together, great time. Now though, there's only like 3 of us that are still local; myself, my brother, and one of my mom's godsons. Still fun though, the godson has 2 kids, 7 and 5 years old, and they're really fun to play with. We played with the playmobile Christmas sets that my parent's have had since I was a kid that they still put out as part of their Christmas displays. Mskate and I also brought some happy meal toys for the kids that we got from our fast food meals (I try to not eat big meals when I go to fast food, which typically means kids meals with a toy that I'm not always collecting). The kids really liked the toys we got them, though a lot of it was probably just that it was a "new toy." The hospital by my parents does a community thing for the children that are hospitalized over Christmas, people come with flash lights and other lights and shine them at the windows (it's like 5th story 100 feet from the building, so it's not like people are sticking flashlights in the window and blinding the kids), and then they shine flashlights back at the people outside. Most of the time the police and fire department gets involved, bringing a car or truck to shine their lights since that's a fun thing for kids. Since my parents live 4 blocks from the hospital with a path to the hospital mskate, godson, his kids, and I walked there to shine the lights. Since mskate worked for santa she got a snowflake wand that we let the kids borrow for the event, along with the snowflake wand that my in-laws got when they went to see mskate. They really liked the wands, and I made sure to remind them that they were borrowing them so they wouldn't get too rough and accidentally break them (because they did get a little rough some of the time). We shined the lights but didn't stay the entire time because it was below freezing and snow everywhere and everyone was getting cold (I could have stayed a little longer, but everyone else didn't want to stay the entire time). Rest of the party was fun, but nothing else super worth discussing.
Not sure exactly when this happened, but I think it was between the college friend party and full festivities. We went up to my aunt's house and did some Christmas celebrating. It was the first Christmas without my grandpa, and was pretty hard on my aunt. Grandpa had lived with her for the last 7 years and died in October. It was a bit of a rough celebration, but we still had good dinner and some gift exchange. My aunt basically gave everyone some valuable-like things from my grandpa's condo (mainly super old ornaments). Then we were able to pick an animal wood carving from my grandpa since he was a master carpenter (maybe not "fully classified," but he was quite amazing). Mskate and I both chose the moose, and now he looks down on the front room from on top of one of our curio cabinets. Speaking of wood carvings, my grandpa would carve a Santa every year and instead of putting up a tree my aunt puts up a Santa village with little fake trees and cotton snow. Mskate and I made her 2 Santa ornaments to add to her village and she puts them up (not this year, but I think she just wanted to put up grandpa's this year). We gave her a banzai tree kit as a present this year and she really liked it (she gardens and this inside gardening kit is perfect for her). Hopefully there's a sprout next time we see her. It was originally going to be a present for my dad but then we had enough things for him and nothing for her, and afterwards mom told us that dad would like a kit as well (we ordered him one and had it shipped to his house).
Lets fast forward some days to the main Christmas festivities. Since mskate and I were in the same school district and met in highschool our parents are pretty close to each other, and since my in-laws have a "real guest room" while my parents have "a twin bed in the spare room," we stay with my in-laws for the Christmas festivities. We went to my in-law on December 23rd in the evening and unloaded all our gifts for everyone. Nothing super exciting this day, just packing up the car and organizing our gifts for who they go to and the different parties.
It is now Christmas Eve, the day we celebrate with my grandparents. This was a different than normal, since my grandma is no longer in her town house and is in memory care. Little backstory, this year my grandma moved out of her townhouse condo and moved into memory care since she can't live on her own anymore. We still did McDonald's lunch, and Mskate and I picked up the orders for everyone since I have the app and get points on orders. Little backstory on the tradition for the new readers, my grandparents lived 1 block away from McDonalds and on Christmas Eve we would go to McDonalds for lunch and then Santa would deliver presents to their house when we were out to lunch, and we continued the tradition up to when she moved out (and still do as I said). It was really good that we brought food because grandma wasn't eating her lunch at memory care since she didn't like it. We got her a happy meal and that was enough for her (she only ate about half of it actually). I got a mcrib since they have that again, and everyone else had different meals. It was a good time. After eating we did our gift exchange. We got grandma some noomio stuffed animals from our Disney adventures since she likes "her babies," one of her valentines day stuffed animals that somehow ended up in our gift stash, and some snack foods. She got me a crystal growing kit (because I want to see what happens if I let it sit for like a year), pokemon sun and moon DVD set, pretzel trail mix, a pin board for my pin collection, a lows gift card, krabby patty candy, and star bills. After all our gift exchanges we went to church at my grandma's home parish. She hasn't been there in a long time, and it was great for her to see everyone and everyone to see her. It was a little hectic getting her in the church (because she struggles with walking and sitting), but still good. After all this we went back to the in-laws and did a night before gift exchange. I got some lego sets and socks, and maybe some other things I'll explain in the tomorrow bit. I finished off the night by watching some of A Christmas Story on TBS (because I always watch A Christmas Story on TBS as part of their 24 hour marathon).
OK, it's Christmas day. We wake up and go out to the presents all spread out, everyone finding their presents spread around. IRA's favorite presents from this was the Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends DVD set we got him. Mskate really liked all the lulu lemon clothes and Disney animated movie DVD set she got (though it's region 2 since dad-in-law doesn't pay much attention to regions and he has a region free player). Delilah really liked the dog sweaters we got her, one a dragon costume and another a Christmas tree sweater. I got Pokemon megablocks both mini pokemon in balls (that I like to use to decorate my work desk), a dragonite, and pokedex, a magicarp nanoblock kit (a brick toy imported from Japan), a Tangled TV show DVD set, animal crossing lego sets, a Disney lego set, sonic shirt (specifically for the day after Christmas, you'll see why), a water ring game, and some candy. IRA also got a nanoblock kit (him blastoise), but he was having trouble building it so then I spent about an hour building it for him. Some time we had breakfast, and it was nice and relaxing because we didn't have to pick up mskate's aunt (the one in assisted living). It was a fun calm morning.
After the in-laws it was time for my parent's Christmas party. Mskate and I were like the last to arrive, meaning we didn't have to help get my grandma in the house. We started off just catching up with everyone. PepperBC and her mom where there which was great. I told them all about our Hawaii trip and they filled us in with how the cousins are doing. MMT may be getting proposed to before the end of the year, which means that my wedding streak is maybe still going. Our accordion friends also came, and we had a fun sing along with everyone. We sang all the Christmas songs, sleigh bells, let it snow, santa clause is coming to town, and so forth, and some Disney songs since mskate likes them and they're fun to sing. The accordion friends thanked us a lot for the call blocker since it blocks almost all of the annoying spam calls now. Cousin M joined us for dinner which was great, and dinner was pork tenderloin. It was a fun party with everyone. Getting grandma to and from the dinner table was something since she has trouble with the ups and downs. After the party was really difficult getting her out. We had to instruct her on how to get out of the chair and get into the wheel chair, and then when we got her out to the car how to turn around and sit down in the car. It was like a 30 minute ordeal. According to mom, when they got back to the assisted living facility the workers were able to get my grandma out of the car, in her room, and ready for bed before mom was even able to get the car parked and say goodnight. Professionals at work.
Now it's the day after Christmas, where we did a gift exchange with my parents and brother. My brother got a lot of different beers (because he likes beer), and a Coors Lite sign that I found. We game my mom a fancy silicon like pool noodle on season close out (normally like a $20 pool toy for only like $5), and lots of cotton candy (because she loves cotton candy). We got my dad some Peanuts Snoopy things since he loves that, a folding emergency shovel, gloves with flashlights in the fingers, a stripped screw removal kit, and some other things I'm forgetting. Mskate got lots of Disney gift cards. I got a Rokr globe lamp, rokr owl clock, a microwavable ramen bowl (because I like to have ramen when traveling), spongebob socks, elf goldfish, multi-connection charging cables (I call them "multi-taps"), a santa chocolate guy with a smashed penny, Fall Guy on 4K (great movie), a Power Puff Girls ornament, a chuck e cheese gift card, star bills, and silly putty. Later we had some left overs for lunch, great little time with the family. Later in the evening IRA and I went to Sonic 3. The movie was sold out (we got the last seats that were together) and someone was sitting in our seats, and that's because someone else was sitting in their seats, and so on like all the way down. Right before the movie the row basically did the wave of shifting down. Great movie, you can hear my thoughts here. Pretty calm night after that.
Following day we went home. I packed up all our gifts and travel things and we went back home. Once we got home I unpacked everything and began sorting where to put things. Some time during these days we went to different stores looking for after Christmas sales. We got some candy and chips, and some gift wrap and dog presents for next year. I also got my dogecoin migrated to my coinbase wallet. So fun story, back in college I liked to tinker with bitcoin and dogecoin because it was all new and I could get it from faucets and obvious ponzi schemes ("double your crypto in 100 hours," I'd deposit the minimum and 80% of the time would get in before it collapsed, making a decent amount). I used dogechain as my dogecoin wallet because it was an official cloud wallet and was easy to manage my crypto. I got an email from dogechain mid-November that they were going to fully shut-down and if your wallet wasn't migrated by December 31st your crypto would be lost for good. I missed my window to send the dogecoin through the wallet application but not to get the private key and back it up on a local wallet. I tried just putting it right into coinbase (since they now support dogecoin), but it wouldn't work so I installed dogecoin core on my old college laptop (because I wanted to use a computer that I wouldn't be worried about breaking), and it was running for like a month because it had to update the entire 14 year blockchain. Yeah... Whatever though, after a month of updating I was able to move my 220 doge to coinbase. If it wasn't a "substantial amount" (when I started it was worth about $140 and when I finished it was like $80) I would have just cut my losses, but I didn't want to lose out on that. Whatever.
Now for a little fun thing between Christmas and New Years. One of mskate's good childhood friends was in town and was having a 1 year old birthday party for her son. The funny thing is a lot of the friend's family lives out by us, but the party was at the friend's parents house an hour away from us. We went basically right after church. It was quite the drive, and rainy, and they live in the country nowhere with some dirt roads, meaning that our just cleaned car got dirty. Thankfully the rain washed off a lot of the wet dirt (it's the drying on that makes it stick). The party was pretty good. The baby really liked my hat, every time I was close he just stared at me. I asked his parents if it was my hat or beard and they said "probably the hat." I played galiga with some of the other party guests, and we visited with the people mskate knows. One of the party games was "guess the baby's month age in 12 different pictures." I only got one picture right, but I did better than my wife who got zero and follows the mom's instagram. Funny thing when it came time to sing the baby happy birthday and give him his muffin (no "baby crushes cake and makes a mess" scene here, he has allergies that prevents him from enjoying normal cake), he was more interested in the balloons than he was in the muffin. His parents kept trying to get him to eat the muffin but he just wanted to play with the balloons, and when the parents tried to take the balloons away from him he got sad and would cry. Pictures had to be taken between balloons. All went well, except for the lack of red meat sandwiches (it was all turkey and I don't like turkey), and the dog being territorial and not liking people (not violent, but very yappy and there's something about a dog's bark within like 6 feet of me that makes my right ear hurt). Otherwise it was a good little day.
2 days later it was now New Years Eve. Normally we have someone hosting a new years party but none this year. I got a promotional text from zapzone (a regional laser tag, arcade, and entertainment complex) that they were having a new years promotion, and we considered going to it, but on closer inspection it was a little too expensive for our preference decided just spent the night in. We did go driving around to Party City to get some things on sale since they're going out of business (got a helium tank for my mom since she loves balloons and some of those study plastic party cups that my in-laws like to use among some other things) and an upscale grocery store where we got some personal party supplies (spinach dip and chocolate moose). We watched The Emperor's New Groove together and I watched an IP Man movie and John Tucker Must Die on hulu before they expired. We also went to New Years Vagile mass since New Years is a holy day of obligation. I built one of my lego (mega block) sets from Christmas, the Pokedex. Mskate doesn't like to stay up late (and for that reason she kept asking "what are we even celebrating" and didn't really want to accept "it's just a reason to party"), so 10 minutes before midnight I called her into the living room and pulled up Dick Clark's Rock'n New Years Eve on ABC. Since I run our local channels through a networked over the air DVR that makes it's own server or something (along with digital not being "100% live" like analog was), the feed was like 30 seconds to 1 minute behind live so mskate was looking at her phone and saying "my phone is ahead." We counted down the minute countdown and kissed at midnight along with some sips of wine (I didn't have a small thing of bubbly wine and I didn't want to open a full bottle). Happy New Year. The Time Square ball is getting replaced after 17 years of use, and if my math is right that means that I saw the ball right when it was first used back when I went to New York back in highschool with the band.
New Years Day is just calm. One of the main things was we watched the Rose Bowl Parade. This was the first time I've watched it, and it was really neat, everything was made of roses. We also went to Meijer for a little more after Christmas shopping (we've been doing a lot of that recently). The main thing we needed to get was on sale sweatshirts that mskate and her dad could throw off to donate at the marathon they're doing next week, and an ornament box that was on sale. We got it and started taking some ornaments off, and it's going to work out well for us since it's all divided to individual holders. We also made one of mskate's lego, brick heads of inside out characters. I stuck them in the Lego Mario display, so now it's kaiju pixar characters in the mushroom kingdom. I also watched a lot of masked magician on youtube. It's also the return of Family Guy on Adult Swim. I tried watching some but then I remembered why I don't like Family Guy.
Now I need to go back to work. It was a really great vacation. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
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