Merry Christmas and happy Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Tet, Ramadan, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve, New Year, Fruitcake Toss Day, and birthday to Sheridan, Nick, McKell, Laura, Janessa, Helena, Tony, Grandma Thelda, Kass, and Rachel, and anything else I might have missed. I'm pretty sure there are at least, like, two more birthdays in there on Alyssa's side. Whew! Now that that's out of the way, we come to the real purpose for this blog entry--to salute the California grunion, a remarkable little fish that crawls out of the ocean to spawn. Oh wait, I mean, to talk about Christmas and such.
Christmas was a little more special than usual, for the reason that this was Ting-Ting's first Christmas where she actually knew what was going on, as opposed to last year, when she had only been in the country for three days and probably didn't understand why all these random nutjobs were showering her with gifts. She got to see Santa for the first time (which went about like you'd expect--it was like the Minnie Mouse incident all over again); got to help us decorate for Christmas; got to help pick out and wrap presents; got to help make cookies for Santa; got to learn about Baby Jesus; and got to be an angel in Alyssa's family's traditional Christmas Eve Nativity. (She was actually a shepherd in the Nativity last year but probably just assumed this was some sort of bizarre American initiation ritual, like the kind that frat boys do. Because you know that's the kind of thing Ting-Ting would be an expert on.) Also, Nai-Nai and Ye-Ye (my parents, for those who don't speak Chinese) spent Christmas morning with us, so that was pretty gnarly.
Aside from Christmas itself, we also...
- Went sledding with Alyssa's family, using Ting-Ting's brand spanking new sled she got from Nai-Nai and Ye-Ye. Ting-Ting had a blast and must have gone down the run eight or nine times. She's a daredevil, that one. Next thing we know she'll probably be jumping into drainage ponds with mumbly bad seeds, like in that one movie with what's-her-face.
- Had a neighborhood "music night" at our house, wherein we invited over the neighbors and played music and enjoyed all manner of rot-your-teeth snacky goodness, and anyone who wanted to could perform. It actually went quite well, aside from that infamous moment in every young homeowner's life in which he tries to break icicles off of the Christmas lights over the front porch and winds up smashing one of the bulbs, leaving a two-foot long section of lights that doesn't light, and remains that way for the remainder of the holiday season, since he's too lazy to replace the bulb. Hurray!
- Went to the "Ice Castles" thing in Midway, which was pretty way rad, like a cave made of ice. I half expected Arnold Schwarzenegger to jump out of nowhere and yell "Ice to see you!" And then shoot some people in the crotch, or something.
- Played "Harvey Pooter and the Deathly Death Curse of Death" again, this time with a whole new group of people (except for Brayden, who reprised his award-winning role of Harvey). This playing was more successful than the last, not only because I'd made some big script changes, but also because this group actually tried to solve the mystery, as opposed to the first group, who didn't really seem to care who the murderer was and made lame accusations like "Well, I think it was Bumblemore because he HAD A SINISTER BEARD." In fact, at least one of the players may have actually solved the mystery this time, were it not for me being so vomitously bad at elementary level arithmetic when I designed the most important clue. Yeah, don't ask.
 |
| Nai-Nai after having her hair done by Ting-Ting |
 |
| You would not believe how much trouble it was to take this picture. But so, so worth it. |
0 Comments:
Post a Comment