My Christmas

I suppose I could tell you in person, but this way I get to go into great detail with all of you at the same time! This... is my Christmas.

Got home and hung out with friends non stop until about the 20th. We saw lots of movies, went to McDonald's a lot, and played a bunch of Guitar Hero. All in all it was a super fun time. Shopping for Christmas presents felt different this year. I saw it as a lame pagan ritual with no redeeming value to it at all. That's weird, because in the past I really enjoyed getting people gifts even though it was supposedly meaningless. I felt I had to get "good" presents for my family. I got my younger brother the Mike Yaconelli book that Marv had suggested in the beginning of the year. For my brother I re-gifted a $10 starbucks card I got, and I picked up some fair-trade tea. My parents (via me) donated two months supply of food for somewhere in Africa. This was my way of feeling good about spending money. The best part of the holidays had to have been making a gigantic snow fort at a hill near my house with my brother and my friend. On Christmas day I got quite a surprise. Instead of my family flying out to Vancouver to bring me back here (and have a vacation while doing so) we flew into Edmonton to take a train through the Rockies. In Edmonton we met up with Kelsey's family who so graciously offered to be our taxi service for the day. Her mom and her picked us up from the airport and drove us to the West Ed Mall. Our parents played "do you know this person" and found out we were actually related (5th cousins!) The next morning we got up really really early to board our train which turned out to be 3 hours late. The train was pretty cool; I got the worst sleep of my life, but it was a good one-time experience. We chilled in Vancouver and Victoria, went to Mystic Beach again, and then they left. A sweet Christmas vacation alltogether!