Merry Christmas to all of you wonderful humans! And another Merry Christmas to your wonderful pets as well! It's the day after Christmas here on Guam and I'm stuck at work, trying to recuperate from the past two days.
For the past few years we've had a tradition of celebrating Christmas by having a Christmas Eve Parade in Merizo. It was something that Joey's parents came up with as a fun way to celebrate the season with everyone in the village. Each year we get together and decorate our cars and trailers with lights, Christmas trees, ornaments, garland, and inflatables. As everyone got older, it has sort of become a competition to see who can decorate the best float.
Once the floats are decorated, we load buckets full of candy and parade around the village, throwing candy and yelling "Merry Christmas" to everyone. The kids in the village have really gotten used to our parade, because they're always ready with plastic bags in hand to catch all the sweets.
After the parade is over, we all follow each other back to Joey's parents' house where the kids not-so-patiently wait until it is time to open gifts. The tradition is that they get to open all their gifts at midnight, when it is officially Christmas, but each year we've been letting them open their gifts earlier and earlier. I think we all just get tired of waiting and hearing the little ones constantly ask: "Is it time yet?"
Christmas this year was a very blessed one for the kids. They got so much more than they asked for and even double of some of their gifts. Aniyah even said, "This is the best Christmas EVER!!!" Which was a defining moment because as a pre-teen, she's pretty much too cool for anything. And what's funny is that we didn't get her any high-tech, super-expensive, might-as-well-buy-a-brand-new-car type of gift. (Nope, no iPads, laptops, or tablets here...)
Joey and I usually don't get each other gifts on Christmas - we wait until AFTER Christmas, when we know we won't have to worry about everyone else. That's sort of our own little tradition. We're just happy that our kids are happy.
I hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas this year! I'm looking forward to reading up on how everyone else celebrated the holiday!
P.S. Because every Christmas post should have a funny little story, here's mine: My 4-year-old son, Trace, had been asking/praying/wishing his heart out for the new Skylanders Swap Force game since it came out in October. He even went so far as to buy one of the characters for the game before he got it just because he was REALLY sure he would get it for Christmas. It was just about the only thing he asked for on his list.
Anyway, when the time came to open his gifts from us, I told him that I bought him a box of underwear because he always likes to go without underwear. Needless to say, he was VERY disappointed. So disappointed that he didn't even unwrap the gift. The unopened box of "underwear" was sitting at the top of his pile of opened gifts, so I handed it to him again and said, "Trace, why didn't you open this gift?" to which he replied (with a scrunched up face), "You said it was underwear. I don't want to open underwear." So, after we got a few giggles in about it, Aniyah said, "Trace, maybe Mommy's just kidding. Just open it and check." And sure enough, as soon as he saw it was his coveted Skylanders Swap Force game, he looked over at me, smirked and said, "Mommmm! You just tricked me!" We thought it was hilarious...until he stayed up until 4am playing that game. -_-
