holiday round-up

The veggie kitchen is closed for the holidays. I can't remember the last time I made it to Kroger-- between work and holiday parties and family in town, the last meal at home we had was Stouffer's microwavable manicotti on Sunday, which was good, but is falling over the "homemade" fence onto the "definitely not" side. I plan on going to the grocery store today and getting enough food to make it through the weekend, but starting Monday it's back to parties and families and travel.

Monday night is my office party. I'm lucky enough to work at such a young office, so I know this will be a fun party. My boss's partner owns a bar-- there will be plenty of alcohol since we'll be having it there. We're also doing a White Elephant gift exchange, sometimes called Dirty Santa. For those of you who don't know what this entails, click that link back there to wikipedia. I have to think of a good gift-- our limit is $25. I think a board game would be good, something like Taboo. We decided to go for real gifts instead of gag gifts as this is meant to replace anyone feeling like they have to get the boss a gift or a small gift for coworkers or anything like that. If anyone out there reading this has any creative ideas for my gift I'd love to hear them! But keep in mind I have to get it here in town, not online as there's no shipping time left.

I decided on this coming Saturday I'm going to make a big batch of Christmas cookies and husband and I will decorate them on Sunday. We can give them away as gifts to his coworkers and our friends. We're also going to a tacky Christmas party on Tuesday night and I'm supposed to bring the dessert, so I'll make some super-tacky cookies to accompany us. I think we're going to go to Good Will and get some terrible holiday sweaters (think giant snowflakes and smiling reindeer) to wear over normal clothes for the party-- we have another party to go to directly afterward, and it's a cocktail party, so we have to be mobile. There's a band and drinks at this later party so we'll be out pretty late again.

Wednesday night we're doing Christmas with my family at my parents' condo. They'll be back up here for that, and my older brother will still be here, so I bought a book for him yesterday so he has something to unwrap from us. They aren't giving me and my husband anything that we will unwrap since they're paying for our Italy plane tickets, but I imagine my mother wrapped up some underwear or socks and a picture of Italy if I know her. We'll eat dinner together though as that's the last time we'll see each other before Christmas. I am thankful they are coming up here because they'll be able to watch Bub while we're at my husband's mom's house.

Thursday, Christmas Eve, we make the five hour trip to his mom's house where we will spend Christmas with his mom, step-dad, sister, brother-in-law, and his aunts, uncles, and cousins. They're a fun group-- board games, jokes, music, cooking, etc. We'll be coming back home on Sunday, and on Monday it's back to work.

The holidays can be so hectic. Luckily I've gotten almost all our shopping done with just a couple things to pick up this weekend, mostly for my husband. So far I've gotten him two sweaters (on sale for $29 each!), but because he's already wrapped my gifts and apparently I'm getting four, once of which I know is an expensive overcoat, I had to think of some other things to get him. I came up with a massage gift certificate and a pair of Toms. I'm not sure he'll like the Toms, but he can wear them as houseshoes, and I think guys in these shoes always look so cute.

I asked for everything I'm getting except for one or two things from my husband; he seems to have gone overboard. I don't like surprises very much. I suppose not wanting surprises means I miss out on some of the Christmas joy-- although I don't know exactly what's in a package, I usually have a pretty good idea. I just hate to see money or time wasted on stuff I don't want or need. In my opinion, we'd probably all be better off exchanging nothing but our time spent with each other at Christmas rather than bought gifts. I guess that wouldn't be as much fun though, and I do like to shop for special gifts that make people smile.