Second Day of Christmas
Dec. 25th, 2011 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aAnd we're now largely done with the second day of Christmas, like the first but more tiring.
We started off the morning with Kimberly and me opening stockings (a bit too full of candy, which is my fault) and presents. Kimberly found me a red overshirt that is actually a good replacement for my old red overshirt, something I've been looking for for years. It's warm and soft and just about perfect. (And next time my old shirt loses a button, I will quietly retire it.) Also, a neat "Captain Obvious" t-shirt, a book on media, a book on reality TV, and some fridge magnets. We also got a neat-looking TV show from Chris A., on a BBC detective in a weird town. We're always on the look out for new good shows from the Beeb, and we'd never heard of this one, so I'm particularly excited to take a look.
Oh, and we got toys for the cats too, of course, and they generally went off well. A ball with ridges to make it roll erratically that you put catnip into was the big winner, but Cobweb was excited by everything! Which is pretty exciting in itself, as she's our old, sick cat. We also got a toy that you fill with cat treats where the cats try to extract the treats, but I don't know yet how well that'll work. The cats stared and licked at it for a while, but had no success in treat extraction.
Here was the best present, however:
(I lie, I think the ball or the feeder-toy will be a better present long term.)
After that we had lunch, and it was almost time for Bob's brother, Andy, to take us down to San Jose.
We got there around 2.30 and hung out with Wiedlins and Martinezes: my mom, my brothers Jason and Rob, Jason's wife Lisa, Lisa's mom, dad, sister, sister's fiancé and brother, Bob's dad, Bob's dad's girlfriend, Bob's sisters Meg and Jane, and Bob's brother Andy and his family. Whew. I believe the total count was 21! And 3 dogs, who very excited about everyone being around and moved around enough for it to seem like there were twice as many.
Here's one of them destroying a present:
(We were quite impressed that she teethed on the bar until she found where the squeekie was, then eviscerated it to pull out the squeekie, after which she wandered away, job done.)
We had dinner scattered across three tables. One of the reasons I was willing to go down to dinner at my mom's house was that I knew they had enough space like this for everyone without it being crowded. There was ham, croissants, a really great jambalaya, some terrific potatoes, tamales, and a few other things.
There was also more gifting of presents while we were in San Jose. I got some really nice waterproof panniers from my mom & Bob which will be very useful for me for gaming during the rainy season and will also help a lot for grocery shopping during the rainy season, now that we no longer have a local grocery store. They're not as big as my normal panniers, but will be 100% more useful when it's wet out, and it's going into the season now where I often would have opted not to use my panniers because I was worried about the rain. I also got some fancy lights to go in my spokes and not only light me up more at night but also create great patterns. And some great t-shirts: a totally terrific black-and-red shirt with a sword and a d20 which must be worn to my next Pathfinder game and a neat shirt that quotes "The Raven" in the shape of a raven.
The siblings got me copies of The First Law trilogy, which I've been hearing good things about and have been wanting to read for a while.
We chatted with various Martinezes and Wiedlins over the course of the evening and taught Jason and Lisa and others how to play Ubongo, the game which we'd bought them (and which they seemed to like), and then caught a ride home at about 7pm with Jason and Lisa. It was a good choice, because we got to talking about various books on the ride home and I lent Lisa the first 14 volumes of The Walking Dead and Jason The Chronicles of the Black Company when we they dropped us off.
My dad called not long after we got home and we chatted for a while. Other than healing Cobweb and watching the start of The Amazing Race 3 (which was just released on DVD!) that was pretty much the day. Totally peopled out now. And we have too much junk food to eat over the coming week. But a good day.
Tomorrow, I'm planning to spend some more of the Christmas money from my dad on (hopefully) a new windbreaker for biking at Northface Outlet and since we'll be halfway there, we're then going to go to Target for our week's grocery shopping. My sister and her guy are coming to visit on Thursday (I think), but other than that I have a pretty empty week with R&R planned!
We started off the morning with Kimberly and me opening stockings (a bit too full of candy, which is my fault) and presents. Kimberly found me a red overshirt that is actually a good replacement for my old red overshirt, something I've been looking for for years. It's warm and soft and just about perfect. (And next time my old shirt loses a button, I will quietly retire it.) Also, a neat "Captain Obvious" t-shirt, a book on media, a book on reality TV, and some fridge magnets. We also got a neat-looking TV show from Chris A., on a BBC detective in a weird town. We're always on the look out for new good shows from the Beeb, and we'd never heard of this one, so I'm particularly excited to take a look.
Oh, and we got toys for the cats too, of course, and they generally went off well. A ball with ridges to make it roll erratically that you put catnip into was the big winner, but Cobweb was excited by everything! Which is pretty exciting in itself, as she's our old, sick cat. We also got a toy that you fill with cat treats where the cats try to extract the treats, but I don't know yet how well that'll work. The cats stared and licked at it for a while, but had no success in treat extraction.
Here was the best present, however:
(I lie, I think the ball or the feeder-toy will be a better present long term.)
After that we had lunch, and it was almost time for Bob's brother, Andy, to take us down to San Jose.
We got there around 2.30 and hung out with Wiedlins and Martinezes: my mom, my brothers Jason and Rob, Jason's wife Lisa, Lisa's mom, dad, sister, sister's fiancé and brother, Bob's dad, Bob's dad's girlfriend, Bob's sisters Meg and Jane, and Bob's brother Andy and his family. Whew. I believe the total count was 21! And 3 dogs, who very excited about everyone being around and moved around enough for it to seem like there were twice as many.
Here's one of them destroying a present:
(We were quite impressed that she teethed on the bar until she found where the squeekie was, then eviscerated it to pull out the squeekie, after which she wandered away, job done.)
We had dinner scattered across three tables. One of the reasons I was willing to go down to dinner at my mom's house was that I knew they had enough space like this for everyone without it being crowded. There was ham, croissants, a really great jambalaya, some terrific potatoes, tamales, and a few other things.
There was also more gifting of presents while we were in San Jose. I got some really nice waterproof panniers from my mom & Bob which will be very useful for me for gaming during the rainy season and will also help a lot for grocery shopping during the rainy season, now that we no longer have a local grocery store. They're not as big as my normal panniers, but will be 100% more useful when it's wet out, and it's going into the season now where I often would have opted not to use my panniers because I was worried about the rain. I also got some fancy lights to go in my spokes and not only light me up more at night but also create great patterns. And some great t-shirts: a totally terrific black-and-red shirt with a sword and a d20 which must be worn to my next Pathfinder game and a neat shirt that quotes "The Raven" in the shape of a raven.
The siblings got me copies of The First Law trilogy, which I've been hearing good things about and have been wanting to read for a while.
We chatted with various Martinezes and Wiedlins over the course of the evening and taught Jason and Lisa and others how to play Ubongo, the game which we'd bought them (and which they seemed to like), and then caught a ride home at about 7pm with Jason and Lisa. It was a good choice, because we got to talking about various books on the ride home and I lent Lisa the first 14 volumes of The Walking Dead and Jason The Chronicles of the Black Company when we they dropped us off.
My dad called not long after we got home and we chatted for a while. Other than healing Cobweb and watching the start of The Amazing Race 3 (which was just released on DVD!) that was pretty much the day. Totally peopled out now. And we have too much junk food to eat over the coming week. But a good day.
Tomorrow, I'm planning to spend some more of the Christmas money from my dad on (hopefully) a new windbreaker for biking at Northface Outlet and since we'll be halfway there, we're then going to go to Target for our week's grocery shopping. My sister and her guy are coming to visit on Thursday (I think), but other than that I have a pretty empty week with R&R planned!