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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So, whether I believe it or not I've made it to Friday. The last day/obstacle/obstruction before my three-day Christmas weekend. And I am psyched as all hell. And because I've put in an extra two hours this week I have to work only 6 hours plus a half hour lunch! After working with my boss in three different stores the past three days, I am quite interested in working in my store...by myself today haha Not that we didn't get A LOT of work done but three days of "supervision" is enough. And she only did that so that we could get important work done in all three stores but she had to put that it was for supervision purposes hah

King of Prussia is a cursed store for me. It is the store where my keys were stollen from my backpack in the 5 minutes that I went to the bathroom last month. And now I somehow locked my key in my car at the end of lunch. I had to put something into my cart outside my car to take back into the store and I guess my elbow or something managed to hit the lock button. Luckily my PDA was on me while I was locked out. I was going through all of the scenarios while we worked afterwards like if my boss could drop me off and Jenn left me tokens I could take the two busses to get my car and drive it back. I could have done it last night or left immediately after waking up this morning. But I called Jenn and luckily our friend Lauren was up for driving my spare key which was at our apartment to me. This way I could just drive it home last night and not worry about extra trips. It worked out pretty well because we still have about 2 hours work to do (when I normally was supposed to clock out and leave in 45 minutes) and I figured by the time that we finished and took our pictures and clocked out, she'd be getting there since it would take her an 1 to 1.5 hours to get there. Luckily I made pretty good time getting home. It takes about 45-55 minutes to get there in the morning from my apartment. It normally takes me about 2 hours to get home because of horrible traffic. Well last night I left 2 hours later than I normally do and got home only an hour after I usually get home. Took me about 53 minutes to get home which is pretty awesome.

So Jenn had to leave very early this morning for Chicago to get fingerprinted for the airline again like 16 months ago (thereabouts) since she has to do it again to be hired by them. She laid with me until I fell asleep. Then I had her wake me up when she was leaving with Lauren for the airport. Then she called me at 6:10am to wake me up for the day. Luckily the whole process doesn't take very long because Chicago is expected to get mauled by a snow storm starting sometime shortly after noon. But hopefully Jenn's flight, which is schedule not too long before then I think, will get up in the air and be headed back towards here before it starts or else who knows when she'll get back. So here's hoping!

I am going to work on some sites/programs when I get home. Maybe play a few games of baseball on PS2 as I am only 63 games away from finishing the season...although I'll have three rounds to play in the offseason hah Tomorrow I may try to get my haircut finally as I've needed/wanted one for some time now and I want it done for Christmas...although this may be moved to after practice if they'll still be open... and then drive down to practice. I am working on lining up a drummer to come in to audition as right now we have two drummers wanting to try out so hopefully we'll get one of them in to get the ball moving on rounding out our lineup. And then we come back and I have to finish up my Christmas shopping since my money was directly deposited at midnight this morning. Then I can come home and wrap them since Jenn works 2-11pm.

YAY CHRISTMAS!

Alright soulchickens, I am off to get ready for work and then head to it. But have a great day and I'll catch you a.s.a.f.p.!

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