December’s Activities and Festivities

Warning: The following blog is LONG with lots of pics. :-P

Dec. 4th
On one of our weekend outings, Dad and I spotted a car in the parking lot between Huffs restaurant and the Dollar Tree. No surprise there, right? It’s a parking lot. :-P But this car or was it an SUV was empty and had the driver’s door wide open. Le whoops? Dad went into the restaurant to get the owner and I waited by the car…just in case. Didn’t want to close it and possibly lock the driver out. Dunno how long it was open, but good thing nothing was taken.

I forget what else we did that day, but it was apparently too much. Dad stayed home sick the next day. Booo… He got so sick he had to take the week off of work and no Target Tuesday…. That is to say, he still made it out to make a quick Target run, but no fun and games with moi to go with. :-P

Main Street, Disneyland

Dec. 10th & 13th
Issi had a few days off work so we used them to go to Disneyland! :-D While both days were busy, it was still fabulous! I got all the major highlights of Christmas at Disneyland on Friday, Haunted Mansion with the Nightmare Before Christmas make-over they have for Halloween and Christmas, It’s a Holiday Small World with its dazzling lights on just about ever surface of its exterior and carols in all languages inside, the holiday light show, fireworks, and even snow! Mansion, we’d seen last time we went, but it’s always a favorite. :-D Small World was beautiful as always, and we were in line when it was dark so it was lit up already. When we got out we just happened to be at a nice lil spot to catch the majority of the fireworks. It’d been a while, so I was glad we caught them. :-) I love Christmas at Disneyland, everything is decorated so nicely. And while walking around, Issi spotted the special popcorn buckets shaped like a Mickey snowman! It was adorable and so she got one. Walking to some ride or another, we ended up on the “street”, so I got my snow! Okay so it was Disney style…tiny bubbles, but it still looked pretty coming down and covering us all. :-D Seriously, I felt like a big kid. Well I am a big kid. :-P

It's a Holiday Small World

Monday when we came back we did a few more rides and saw some reindeer (as well as the presidentially pardonned turkey) before getting stuck in a HUGE traffic jam of people. They closed early that night and we got off a ride just as it was closing. Actually, that was the day we hit Mansion, not Friday… Anywho… Masses of people were being ushered out of the park, excluding people coming in with special wrist bands…private party. It was insane! And it took us forever to get out. They should have opened the stroller gates to let us out, but then they couldn’t keep track of the party folk coming in I guess. I picked up a holiday Mickey at one of the shops outside. :-D

Popcorn bucket and Holiday Mickey

Before heading home, we went back to her place where a package waited for me. :-D I apologize now. I am terrrrible at receiving gifts. I haven’t done the jumping around and screaming bit in ages. And even the whole surprised face thing doesn’t always happen. But for the record, I love my gifts from Issi and Andrew. I am now the happy owner of a sonic screwdriver! :-D And Issi got me a beautiful personalized magnet (which I am sad to say I did not see the names while at her house >.< ). The words on it were beautiful by themselves but it was made that much more special with our names on it. :-)

(Sorry the cell phone wouldn't cooperate for better shots.)

:-D

Dec. 11th & 12th
Dad and I had our usual outings. And as we hadn’t seen him all week, the Daddy time was greatly missed. I believe both days we ended up getting back to his place so late there was little time to watch movies. :-P That’s fine. We just hung out for a couple hours while he did stuff on the computer. After all the running around it was nice to just chill. :-)

Dec. 14th
Target Tuesday! Life as we know it resumes with a return of Target Tuesdays. :-P Yes. I am a dork. But hey, how can I not enjoy the fun and silliness. Plus, as they have a market section, we can do some shopping for the house there. Okay, and of course, I do love our dinner stop at Fantastic Café afterwards. :-P

Dec. 15th
Mom had a dental appointment that morning. She’d swopped shifts to avoid having to drive into the office for a company meeting. :-P I, having stayed up waaaay to late as usual, napped for about an hour and woke in time to get showered and dressed, MUCH to Mom’s relief who feared going to the dreaded dentist alone. Before getting on the road, we stopped at a gas station to get the tires aired up. And before Mom even approached the little air machine, some guy walked up to her and offered to help her. She stood by the machine putting in quarters and he aired up her tires. And then when she offered to give him some money, he told her no thanks. :-) Hurray for good deeds in the month of December. :-D

Off of the Huntington Beach Pier

Dec. 16th
My fwend visited! Sawah fwend….. (And in case anyone thinks I’m nuts, it’s from Labyrinth.) I bussed out to her again, which as I’d taken the route before, was way easier this time around. All but one bus dropped me off exactly where the next one picked me up, so there was little to no walking involved. As with last time, there was one hiccup. Last time I almost lost my water bottle running across the street (fell right out of my water bottle holder). This time was a bit worse. As I’d been pressing buttons only moments before our stop, the wires of my headphones were sticking out of my jacket and snagged on a handle on the back of the oh so comfy commuter bus seats. Yanked it right out….I thought out of the iPod itself, but alas no. The cord snapped at the midpoint where a mic piece was. Ah well, that aside, the trip was fine. I read the rest of the way.

Deserted beach... :-P

Surfers waiting for those few and far between waves.

I met Sarah near the beach. We killed time by walking along the pier and taking pics. For lunch we headed to BJ’s for our usual mini pizzas and pizzookies. :-D Actually, we both tried new pizzas and I tried a new pizzookie. Almost got cheated out of my Ghirardelli chocolate square too! See what I get for rebelling and not ordering a straight triple chocolate pizzookie. What can I say; I like vanilla ice cream on my cookies. :-P I would left without it, but Sarah mentioned it to the waiter or someone and he brought me one… Mmmmm….

Travelled all the way here from Canada! :-D

Our adventures led us to exploring a park in Huntington Beach where illegal Canadian geese flocked around the pond along with other geese and ducks and I forgot what else, but they were small and made funny noises. :-P We took lots of pictures along with talking to the birdies. For the first time, I noticed that the ducks actually did have green heads. Prettier than any representation I’d seen of them. We ended up back at her grandparents’ place where I discovered how cool her grandparents were (sci-fi loving and video game playing folks that they are) and made up new rules for Russian Bank (a card game), which will have to be tested again to see if it was the reason the game never ended. :-P

Dec. 18th & 19th
Daddy Days! Yes, that’s actually how I write it in my calendar. :-P One day, we picked up food and headed to his place to try and catch some movie watching time. :-D Christmas movies! I also brought some of my Christmas cards, because I still hadn’t finished the domestically mailed cards. :-P Shame on me! (And I didn’t go to bed Sunday night until the cards were all done!) The other day, we went to Huffs. :-D The mornings both began with trips to the pharmacy for Mom….But the troubles there didn’t get sorted ‘til a couple days later.

Dec. 21st
Sooo…. CVS told us that we couldn’t pick up Mom’s medicine Saturday cuz it was too soon. Told us we could Sunday. But Sunday, we still couldn’t. Worried she wouldn’t get them in time, she planned to call to ask if she could get them without insurance. I prayed she’d be able to get them on the 23rd like they’d said last and not the 30th that they kept flip-flopping to or that they wouldn’t be terribly expensive…some resolution that was manageable, y’know? I woke up and she’d gone to the pharmacy by herself (shocker!) after they told her she could pick them both up that day! Well she picked them up with the insurance help before they changed their story again. Whew. My prayer was answered with a far better result than I’d hoped. :-D Aaaaannddd it spared us at least one errand before Target Tuesday fun began. I spotted a Spongebob plush that looked exactly like the one I'd bought Mom oh so many years ago. :-P Hers is considerably flatter now as she uses it like a pillow. :-P It was funny cuz I hadn't seen one that looked just like hers in well years.

Spongebob sighting at Target

Dec. 22nd
My second cousin or whatever (Mom’s cousin) Debbie dropped by that evening after she got my Christmas card. :D Oh! Speaking of Christmas cards! The first one arrived early in the month, a photo card of Amy and her family. :-D They look so cute and I can’t believe I’ve seen her youngest throughout all her stages in life and she’s in school now! I also got international mail myself from a certain Ah tee eM! :-D Funny thing about my card sending this year, I sent all international mail out by the end of the first week of December (to make sure they got ‘em in time) but like almost everyone else didn’t get theirs until well this past week (cuz I was totally procrastinating). :-P Anywho! Debbie dropped by with Christmas cookies! Num! And even though she kept saying she wasn’t going to stay long, she chatted with us for a good while. Catching up on recent stuff in her life and exchanging new tricks on our cell phones (cuz as it turns out she has the exact type we got). It was a good night. :-)

Dec. 23rd
We cooked dinner for Daddy! :-) I made turkey breast and broccoli and Mom made rice pilaf. I’m not a turkey person, but man it was tasty, shame it didn’t last longer. :-P Definitely will have to buy some more.

Dec. 24th & 25th
Ordinary days… Dad worked and went home early. Mom watched her marathon tapes of Ghost Hunters. I watch Christmas movies I’d recorded. I used to hate Christmas night. The fun of the day was over and we would be heading home or winding down if we never left… The next day would be just another day lacking all the Christmas cheer from the days before. Like a sugar high and low. Sadly, that Christmas low starts sooner now. My parents still not ready to celebrate and even I wasn’t feeling it today. I could have spent the day with Dad maybe if I’d woken early enough. But I didn’t. I did go to bed late, but not so terribly late. If I’d heard my alarms, I would have woken early enough to go (albeit later than usual). But I didn’t fall asleep right away. I had a headache and I’d depressed myself before bed when I was doing the dishes. I even got a text message from Mom at like 4:30a.m., asking me if I was going to sleep the day through. I was tempted to reply back with “what do you care, it’s just another day, right?” Bleh. At least the day ended well, thanks to the Doctor. I enjoyed the Doctor Who Christmas special ON Christmas day! :-)

December Randomness…
It rained A LOT this past week or two. So much so that it drove the ants from the ground to retreat into the house. Joy. The house now looks like comet threw up all over the place. Somehow the blue-ish powder doesn’t look like snow to match my Christmas decorations. :-P The lawn we never water will look fabulous after it all ends though! :-P But mannnn…. When it rains it really does pour!

Have I mentioned, Pixie LOVES boxes?

I haven’t watched nearly as many Christmas movies as I usually do by this time of year. Looks like that’ll carry on up until New Years’ Day. I also never bothered to bring my usual Christmas cheer into the world of RP like I usually do… But then I didn’t do much RP’ing this month…. Part of that procrastination problem I have. :-P Between clearing tapes of Christmas movies and make up RPs I have a busy week ahead of me. :-P

And now….I should go to bed. Dad and I are gonna try the whole spend the day together thing again today (it’s now a new day, darn it) and I still have a few dishes to wash. So, sorry for the length. I meant to blog well weeks ago. But c’est la vie.

Christmas e-cards from business like places. :-P