{"id":364,"date":"2003-12-24T23:29:55","date_gmt":"2003-12-25T06:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/?p=364"},"modified":"2025-07-22T12:13:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T17:13:18","slug":"merry-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/?p=364","title":{"rendered":"Merry Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is how it used to work when my grandparents were still with us &#8211; Christmas Eve we&#8217;d (meaning my brothers, parents and me) would open our presents after dinner sometime between 7-8 pm and then we&#8217;d go to Midnight Mass. On Christmas day we&#8217;d go to both sets of grandparents for dinner and more presents. Times have changed, though. And maybe that&#8217;s why even though we had a great day, it just doesn&#8217;t feel like Christmas to me.<\/p>\n<p>We slept in, then started cooking; we made mashed potatos and broccoli\/cauliflower casserole. Half of it was to bring over to my parents&#8217; and the other half is for our intimate Christmas dinner for just the two of us tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>Around 2pm we left for my parents&#8217; and arrived just before 3pm. For two hours we ran back and forth working on my brothers&#8217; computers. Joe ended up reinstalling my one brother&#8217;s Windows XP entirely because he had too many parasites that couldn&#8217;t be removed. We keep telling him it&#8217;s because of the porn sites that he visits, but I guarantee you he&#8217;ll screw up his machine again. My other brother had a few minor issues with some programs &#8211; his AIM is acting all weird and even uninstalling and reinstalling wasn&#8217;t helping so I introduced him to Trillian. He was really mellow and pretty entertaining as he was doped up on Vicadin from the oral surgery he had earlier in the day.<\/p>\n<p>We ate dinner around 5pm, and in usual fashion, there was plenty to choose from &#8211; lasagna, fried chicken, three kinds of potatos, my casserole, meat loaf, salad, corn, peas, potato salad and more. It was all delicious too! We sat around a bit more and then opened presents. <\/p>\n<p>Much to my surprise, my brothers seemed to actually enjoy their presents, which I think I mentioned before were books. I got the older brother &#8220;Idiots Guide to the Internet&#8221; and the &#8220;Odd Todd Handbook&#8221;. The youngest brother got &#8220;Faster Smarter Windows XP&#8221; as well a book on photography and another book on playing the guitar since he wants to learn. I gave my Mom season 3 of MASH on DVD, my Dad some pajama pants and a Beach Boys cd, and my cousin a Blockbuster gift card.<\/p>\n<p>Between everyone I got &#8211; way too many candles, the complete first three seasons of Friends on DVD, a Target gift card and money. Joe got candy, a Speedracer DVD, a Target gift card and money also.<\/p>\n<p>When Joe and I got home we made hot chocolate and opened our presents from one another. He got me the fifth season of Friends so now I need season 4 to make my collection complete (until they release the other seasons anyway). He also got me Wipeout Fusion for the Playstation 2 which is my favorite game. I got him an Indiana Jones box set and a headset to use with his Socom game on the PS2. <\/p>\n<p>And now I feel like a 10 year old going on and on about what I got for Christmas. LOL! So I leave you with a <a href=\"http:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/photos\/2003\/20031224-decorations.html\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/photos\/2003\/20031224-decorations.html','popup','width=500,height=375,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\">photo of my parents&#8217; house decorated for Christmas<\/a>. Goodnight!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is how it used to work when my grandparents were still with us &#8211; Christmas Eve we&#8217;d (meaning my brothers, parents and me) would open our presents after dinner sometime between 7-8 pm and then we&#8217;d go to Midnight Mass. On Christmas day we&#8217;d go to both sets of grandparents for dinner and more presents. Times have changed, though. And maybe that&#8217;s why even though we had a great day, it just doesn&#8217;t feel like Christmas to me. We slept in, then started cooking; we made mashed potatos and broccoli\/cauliflower casserole. Half of it was to bring over to my parents&#8217; and the other half is for our intimate Christmas dinner for just the two of us tomorrow. Around 2pm we left for my parents&#8217; and arrived just before 3pm. For two hours we ran back and forth working on my brothers&#8217; computers. Joe ended up reinstalling my one <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/?p=364\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[123,122],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-photos","tag-brother1","tag-brother2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12196,"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/12196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicole.sleepyfroggie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}