should have known you was trouble from the first kiss

Merry Christmas Eve! We continued our Christmas celebrations today with my sister's family, and the party will culminate tomorrow morning at some ungodly hour -- it's the one day of the year when I have to feign enthusiasm for getting up early, since we do Christmas morning as though Santa delivered presents overnight and we have to get up like little kids who can't sleep from excitement. Then again, I do tend to get excited when I wake up, even though the excitement takes several minutes to work through my surliness over being awake; clearly I still haven't grown up.

I inadvertently slept until noon today, then got up and showered, addressed some Christmas cards (I'm approximately halfway there, and clearly none of them will reach their destinations before Christmas), and walked them out to the mailbox in a perfectly idyllic scene of lightly falling snow. We got two or three inches today, which was enough to spruce everything up without causing chaos, and so the usually bleak countryside is now a winter wonderland. My sister showed up around three p.m., and once we were all settled, we opened presents. I got what looks to be an awesome cookbook (healthy cooking for 1-2 people -- once you get over the inherently depressing thought of cooking healthy food alone, it's great), and it has a higher percentage of recipes that I actually want to try than just about any other cookbook I've ever gotten. Granted, I won't be doing much cooking here, but once I get back to California, I see a lot of new recipes in my future.

After opening gifts, we had Christmas Eve dinner -- turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, rolls, green bean casserole, corn casserole, cranberry sauce, etc. My nieces and nephew (Sammi, Zane, and Allie) seemed to be in good spirits, and Sammi's daughter Jaicee is about the cutest thing I have ever seen (and remarkably well-behaved and happy), so it was fun to see them. After they left, I helped my mother do the dishes, watched some fine CBS programming ("Blue Bloods", starring a less-sexy-than-he-was-in-the-80s Tom Selleck), did some last-minute wrapping for my father, and then messed around on the internet for too long.

And now, I should really go to bed; I predict that my brother will wake me up in less than six hours so that our parents can hear the pitter-patter of our less-than-little feet (well, my feet are still little, but you know what I mean) coming up the stairs for Christmas morning. Merry Christmas Eve, everyone!