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Christmas Eve and Christmas!
Dec. 26th, 2023 11:31 pmMy work day on Christmas Eve was just as slow as expected. I finished up with my actual work within about an hour and a half, and then spent the rest of the day just watching through training videos. Those aren't due until the end of next month, but now I've only got one more to do.
After the half day, my mom came to pick me up. We headed back to her house to hang out.
We made some of our family's traditional holiday cookies: molasses cookies and butter cookies.
( Pics of both: )
We did get a bit of a white Christmas - it snowed a fairly good amount on Christmas Eve. Not as badly around us as it did out on the plains to the east, but still enough to stick. Fortunately the roads around us didn't get too bad.
Taylor and I finished up the Final Fantasy XIV raid we'd started last time ("The Binding Coils of Bahamut.") I definitely see what they meant about this being kind of a weird one to have be optional... because it really does feel extremely plot-relevant, despite a sort of "and now we must never speak of this to anyone" conclusion.
Then we watched the last three episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher. Not quite a typical holiday vibe, but I guess it falls under the "stories of ghosts terrorizing rich people" heading, lol.
Christmas Day was also nice. I was gifted a ton of books (as I'd asked for, haha.) My TBR list is definitely crying, and I have GOT to figure out how to make more time and space for reading. They also got a bunch of books from me. I'm pretty sure that's about 90% of what all our gift-giving is: just... swapping books around, lol.
Alex slept in, but came over to join us around 1:00 or so.
Cy was criminally cozy on my mom's loveseat. (He wrapped himself in the blanket, by nosing under where it was draped over the back of the seat.) The cushion cover is on there solely to protect my mom's furniture from our dogs' stomping on it.
And here's Bella standing on the loveseat. (The books on the table there are all the ones Taylor got, ha.) Ignore Bella's butt glowing in the sun.
We hung around for a couple hours, and then headed home. There Alex and I exchanged our gifts. I got a couple more books, a very large set of lots of colors of gel pen, and like... a thousand cute animal stickers, haha. Also a very cute "fruit bat" squish plush (it's a bat... that looks like an orange. I love it!) Also some candy and very cozy looking socks. I got him model stuff, some brushes for pastelling, a kitchen gadget with some various blades for chopping and slicing, and a new wallet. Also candy and some silly tiny plastic crabs.
After that, he was ambushed by a nap, so we delayed our Christmas movie watching. After he woke up, we made a pizza and then watched Christmas Vacation and our always holiday classic: Christams [sic] Twister.
Amazing as always.
I was dozing off after that one, so we put our other holiday movies on hold. (I'm mildly surprised - Alex doesn't usually want to stretch it into more than one day, ha.)
Today we watched A Christmas Story and Muppet Christmas Carol. Tomorrow will be It's a Wonderful Life. That covers most of our personal holiday classics, ha.
Very glad today was a normal day off for me, but then that I also took tomorrow off. I feel like I *should* have the week between Christmas and New Years off to just do... nothing. Or nothing beyond recovering from a big holiday and doing whatever I want to in order to prep for the new year. But alas, it's hard to take that string of time off from work, since there are a LOT of people who want it off, and a lot that's hard to get coverage for. Oh well - a three and a half day weekend is still nice.
After the half day, my mom came to pick me up. We headed back to her house to hang out.
We made some of our family's traditional holiday cookies: molasses cookies and butter cookies.
( Pics of both: )
We did get a bit of a white Christmas - it snowed a fairly good amount on Christmas Eve. Not as badly around us as it did out on the plains to the east, but still enough to stick. Fortunately the roads around us didn't get too bad.
Taylor and I finished up the Final Fantasy XIV raid we'd started last time ("The Binding Coils of Bahamut.") I definitely see what they meant about this being kind of a weird one to have be optional... because it really does feel extremely plot-relevant, despite a sort of "and now we must never speak of this to anyone" conclusion.
Then we watched the last three episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher. Not quite a typical holiday vibe, but I guess it falls under the "stories of ghosts terrorizing rich people" heading, lol.
Christmas Day was also nice. I was gifted a ton of books (as I'd asked for, haha.) My TBR list is definitely crying, and I have GOT to figure out how to make more time and space for reading. They also got a bunch of books from me. I'm pretty sure that's about 90% of what all our gift-giving is: just... swapping books around, lol.
Alex slept in, but came over to join us around 1:00 or so.
Cy was criminally cozy on my mom's loveseat. (He wrapped himself in the blanket, by nosing under where it was draped over the back of the seat.) The cushion cover is on there solely to protect my mom's furniture from our dogs' stomping on it.
And here's Bella standing on the loveseat. (The books on the table there are all the ones Taylor got, ha.) Ignore Bella's butt glowing in the sun.
We hung around for a couple hours, and then headed home. There Alex and I exchanged our gifts. I got a couple more books, a very large set of lots of colors of gel pen, and like... a thousand cute animal stickers, haha. Also a very cute "fruit bat" squish plush (it's a bat... that looks like an orange. I love it!) Also some candy and very cozy looking socks. I got him model stuff, some brushes for pastelling, a kitchen gadget with some various blades for chopping and slicing, and a new wallet. Also candy and some silly tiny plastic crabs.
After that, he was ambushed by a nap, so we delayed our Christmas movie watching. After he woke up, we made a pizza and then watched Christmas Vacation and our always holiday classic: Christams [sic] Twister.
Amazing as always.
I was dozing off after that one, so we put our other holiday movies on hold. (I'm mildly surprised - Alex doesn't usually want to stretch it into more than one day, ha.)
Today we watched A Christmas Story and Muppet Christmas Carol. Tomorrow will be It's a Wonderful Life. That covers most of our personal holiday classics, ha.
Very glad today was a normal day off for me, but then that I also took tomorrow off. I feel like I *should* have the week between Christmas and New Years off to just do... nothing. Or nothing beyond recovering from a big holiday and doing whatever I want to in order to prep for the new year. But alas, it's hard to take that string of time off from work, since there are a LOT of people who want it off, and a lot that's hard to get coverage for. Oh well - a three and a half day weekend is still nice.
