Christmas came early this year..

My mom is a nurse, and she has to work one of three holidays each year: Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years. Well, Julia always has cheerleading nationals over New Years down in Orlando, so she has to trade for one or the other whenever her holiday falls on New Years, which it did this year. She worked Thanksgiving last year, so this year she traded with someone for Christmas. A few years ago, she worked nights instead of days, so she didn't work til Christmas night. This year, not so lucky.

So we celebrated on Christmas Eve instead. It was sad because we didn't do our traditional breakfast of sausage balls [my favorite!] and cinnamon rolls and juice, but we did go to a Christmas breakfast at a neighbor's house, which was fun. We went to the Christmas Eve service at church, then we came home and cooked dinner: fried turkey, Mom's famous dressing, macaroni and cheese, green beans, rolls, other things that Mom and Dad like that I don't, and apple pie. I managed to peel all of the apples without cutting myself, which is a huge feat considering that I somehow always manage to cut myself at work without realizing it. Perhaps it was the fact that we ate so much later in the day than usual therefore I was hungrier than usual, but everything was exceptional. Then, a Festivus miracle:

we cleaned the kitchen as a family.

It was crazy. I think everyone just wanted to get to the presents haha I made out this year. I wasn't expecting much of anything [except my jeans.. I was so excited about those! I doubled the number of jeans I own in one night!] Here's what all I got:

stocking::

• body washes from Bath & Body Works
• candy
• hair ties
• Go Dawgs fan
• 2 movie tickets [it took me all year to use the ones I got last year haha]
• garage door opener [I was so excited about this! I am so tired of having to get out in the pouring rain or freezing cold and punch in the codes to open the door!]
• striped bag from B&BW
• red watch

wrapped presents::

• 3 pairs of jeans from Gap, which we got for $30 the day BEFORE Thanksgiving. they're normally $70+, so it was a good deal haha
• black wrap
• grey and black striped wrap
• LONG pajama pants! pajama pants are never long enough on Mom and me, so she ordered some long ones from Old Navy. they are the same ones that I almost bought last week when I bought my neon pink fleece instead.
• iHome docking station
• short boots for student teaching
• Michael Kors pea coat!
• Jeopardy daily calendar
• Georgia clutch and key ring.. funny story here. Mom bought this for me LAST YEAR so that I could take it to games this year. she knew that she'd forgotten a gift for me, but she couldn't remember what or where it was. this year, she was looking for a candle, and she found it. WAY after football season.. oh well haha
• tickets to see Beauty & The Beast at the Fox!
• scarf set and a necklace with a family tree on it from Grandmom
• short Georgia Tervis Tumbler
• tall COLTS Tervis Tumbler!
• cassette tape for my car to listen to my iPod. I have one, but I'm not sure if the cassette is messed up or if the tape deck is messed up, so we shall see.

We did Christmas with Memama and Pepaw a few days ago. I got a puffy purple vest and an argyle sweater from them, and they gave me an early graduation gift too: a Georgia snuggie! It's really cute. When I opened it, though, I saw the back of the box first, and a picture of Florida fans in Florida snuggies was staring back at me. Needless to say, my face was one of slight shock. Pepaw was like, "Oh, you don't like it?" and I started laughing and turned the box to show him what I saw. We all started laughing.

It was a good Christmas. Of course, there was the traditional fighting, but luckily I wasn't too involved this year. It was mostly Julia and Dad. But it wouldn't be a holiday without family fights, I suppose.