{"id":697,"date":"2006-12-31T18:52:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-01T00:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/31\/holiday-swag\/"},"modified":"2006-12-31T18:52:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-01T00:52:00","slug":"holiday-swag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/31\/holiday-swag\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Swag"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was Christmas for my family. We had a late lunch of sandwiches and\/or salads and Munchies. And then we chatted or read or slept or played Sims (well, just Judi for the Sims). But eventually we couldn&#8217;t stand the suspense any longer and at 4:30pm, Amy began passing out presents for opening.<\/p>\n<p> We always do the &#8220;take turns&#8221; bit of unwrapping in my family. And we went in order of youngest to oldest. So Rachel started, followed by Amy, me, Judi, dad, mom. (The difference in dad &#038; mom&#8217;s age is 6 months, but she is the older&#8230;) It was lots of fun unwrapping and seeing what folks got and seeing their expressions when they opened your presents. I, for one, had a blast with Amy &#038; Rachel&#8217;s gifts. Rachel decided maybe she&#8217;d like some ice skates from LL Bean since they look more gym-shoe like and, thus, more comfortable than what she&#8217;d had in the past. So I told her that I&#8217;ll see about getting her some ice skates. And I did! And with Amy&#8217;s gift, I made up a Netflix-style service of my own DVDs. I call it Flicks DOT Net and made up a logo &#038; everything. She got several pre-paid envelopes for the DVDs, and a list of my collection for her to mark up requests. We&#8217;re shooting for 5 at a time and we&#8217;ll see how it goes. <\/p>\n<p> The surprise gift of the afternoon were these little wind-up flashlights that mom&#8217;s cousin got everyone. They&#8217;re LED lights and very easy to get lit. We had a blast cranking and shining and I&#8217;m happy to note that I&#8217;m not the ONLY one who looked into the lights. We took a break about an hour into the unwrapping and wound up finishing just a little before 7pm. <\/p>\n<p> We had supper in mom&#8217;s &#8220;new&#8221; dining room. Chicken casserole, green beans, Brussels sprouts for mom &#038; Amy, cottage cheese, cranberry sauce from the can, and vino. It was an excellent supper and we toasted Christmas and families. <\/p>\n<p> We stayed there til after midnight and finally mooched on home with our swag. And boy did we do well! I have placed my holiday swag under my tree and taken a photo of it.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pics.livejournal.com\/trinalin\/pic\/0005yw31\" width=500 height=375 title=\"Holiday Swag\" ><\/div>\n<p> As you can see, I received many nice things. (The teddy bears are just decoration.) Several items of clothing from the parentals: 4 turtle neck shirts, 2 vests, corduroys and socks (which I picked up today). A Brit&#8217;s Pub shirt from A&#038;R (from the English pub near their place). Dad&#8217;s toy (that the thing on the left with the nails in it) from this year. A Robopet from the parentals &#8211; yay toys! Books, a CD, and DVDs from the folks, <a href=\"https:\/\/elsaf.livejournal.com\"><b>elsaf<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/judiang.livejournal.com\"><b>judiang<\/b><\/a>. Wrap-around hearmuffs from the folks (all of us got a pair). The aforementioned flashlight and a box of gardening tools from mom&#8217;s cousin (the box of tools is under the clothes). A lovely photo of A&#038;R in a motherboard-style frame from the girls which is currently on my kitchen counter and thus not in the photo. And some book uprights for when I finally get my bookshelves built (from m&#038;d). The two wrapped presents there are birthday gifts &#8211; one from Elsa &#038; one from Judi. I get to open then tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p> Today, Judi and I headed off to Fairborn for my monthly(ish) trek to the Bookery Fantasy and Jeet India. We both got $50+ worth of stuff. And we had Indian Fud at Jeet. Wonderful buffet. We also went to the Evil Puppy Mall where Judi hugged a baby Pomeranian for a bit. At the Walking Place, I bought socks from mom as well as socks from me. (Well, they were buy 3 get 1 free, so I got 2 pair from mom and 2 pair from me). I love Fox River Socks!<\/p>\n<p> For the third time since my holiday began, Judi and I visited Best Buy. This time, I was going in with the intent to get some speakers for my iPod for the kitchen and\/or living room. (They&#8217;re portable enough for both &#8211; or even my bedroom should I desire.) I got a nice set of Logitech speakers for $150. And I&#8217;ve tested them out and they are nice. Judi got herself an external soundcard for her laptop.<\/p>\n<p> After a short stop in Meijer for the last of my groceries for tonight and tomorrow, we returned home. Judi immediately plopped onto the sofa for a nap and I worked on getting things ready for tonight&#8217;s New Year&#8217;s Eve gathering. We&#8217;re playing games and eating food and watching movies and stuff. <\/p>\n<p> I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I certainly intend to do so!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was Christmas for my family. We had a late lunch of sandwiches and\/or salads and Munchies. And then we chatted or read or slept or played Sims (well, just Judi for the Sims). But eventually we couldn&#8217;t stand the suspense any longer and at 4:30pm, Amy began passing out presents for opening. We always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[48,16,103,21,27],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-livejournal","tag-amy-rachel","tag-christmas","tag-family","tag-judi","tag-presents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pagefillers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}