Holiday Exhilaration

As the Lowery Christmas tradition instructs us, we opened gifts on Christmas Eve, though not before our annual bread and cheese dinner. It's amazing how gourmet a meal you can make from such simple food.

David, Augustine, Atheena, and Catherine arrived shortly before dinnertime, at about 5:30, bringing joy and good tidings and homemade vegan donuts.

After we ate, we had time to kill before Ben came home from Starbucks, so we played Left Right Center with $1 bills. In the first round of the excellent gambling game, Thomas won. Since Ben really likes Left Right Center, we waited until after we opened presents to play round 2. But Ben wasn't home yet, so we called him and sang "Moon River" very loudly and with the wrong words, and then some of us played Bananagrams.

PRESENTS!!!

To demote the need to get presents for 10 people every Christmas, we have picked names for Christmas for longer than I can remember. We picked names way back in August, and now the secrets are revealed: I had Ben. In the past week, I've been scrambling to finish up his presents, and I managed and I

Dan had me. I was given a pair of duck down slipper boot things, that are super comfortable and warm and will be very wonderful in Big Bend this coming week. Hidden inside the duck down slippers, I was presented with cinnamon gum, my favorite, V5 Pilot pens, pickles, chocolate, Amazon gift card, and an iTunes gift card.

Dad gave the family 2 things: a new massage chair (the one we got last Christmas wore out after a couple months cos we used it so much. This new one will hopefully last a little longer) and a MacBook Pro. It is so amazing and fast and gorgeous.

After presents, we still had another half hour before the Lowery kids had to depart to Midnight Mass, so we played round 2 of Left Right Center.

I won.

I'd never actually won Left Right Center, and now I have. 25 bucks easy. I love gambling. ;)

Elizabeth said the Midnight Mass was at 11, and we got there ten minutes before.

Midnight Mass is, wouldn't you guess it, at midnight, not 11, so we were sitting in Church for an hour before mass. It was a long hour, especially since we thought it was only ten minutes. But oh well. It was a very holy night.

When we got home, we fell into bed and sleep. At roughly 9:00, people began to file out of their bedrooms and examine the contents of their stockings, which were laid out on the table surrounded by presents.

Mom and Dad went to mass in the morning, so they didn't get home till about 10 or so, at which point we had all acknowledged the wonderful items in our felt stockings.

I received more V5 Pilot pens, Christmas lights for my lair, a book light, which will be much appreciated in Big Bend with duck down slippers from Dan, a niddy noddy, (a kind of yarn winding tool) candy and assorted other food things, hair clips, and more cinnamon gum.

Dan installed an indoor swing, which is awesome. Every house needs one. Seriously.

We just got home from seeing the new Tintin movie, which was fantastic. The screenplay was written partly by Steven Moffat, the head writer and executive producer for Doctor Who, which guarunteed that Tintin would be at least partly enjoyed. It was fully enjoyed.

Tonight, we will have our Christmas Feast of a Smoked Turkey, which we got from a very, very, very, very, very generous friend, and various sides made by people. Other people, not me.

And now, I publish this and log out with fantastical speed.

Merry Christmas.