I am spoiled.

Christmas was a different experience this year, because we weren't surrounded by family. To compensate for the emotional pain of this, Lee and I kind of overindulged each other with gifts. I guess we were helping the economy out, so that's a great thing. On my birthday, Dec. 24, Lee woke me up with a necklace as my first present. Then he braved the traffic and took me to work since he had the day off, and brought me Starbuck's. He spent the morning shopping and got my car washed. There is this white stuff they use up here to de ice the roads. I don't know if it's salt or calcium or something else, but it sticks on the sides of your car and, being the cold weather novices that we are, we are afraid this white stuff will damage our car, so therefore, it is of utmost importance to wash the car often. If anyone can tell us what that stuff is, we'd appreciate the knowledge and it may just put an end to our paranoia. Anyways, Lee picked me up from work around 11 and we walked around this fancy mall across from my office, then he took me to a fancy seafood restaurant for lunch. I got to have crab legs! This was very important, since I get good seafood twice a year: my birthday and our anniversary. Crab legs are so worth the effort of eating them. Yum. I opened a second present there and got a pair of leather boots. They smelled so good. We got lost going to Walgreen's in Fairfax (we always get lost in Fairfax), then we went bowling. Turns out, the bowling alley we went to was donating all their proceeds on Christmas eve to a charity of the patrons' choosing, so we got to help out the Diabetes foundation. That was a great way to spend my birthday. Lee made me a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie cake that was really good and we had BFD (breakfast for dinner). We rented Fred Claus, because White Christmas was already rented out. Other gifts I got ( I really sound like a child...) was XBox SceneIt, which is so fun, a couple more necklaces, a Cowboys hat, sweatpants, and a hat with earflaps to keep my head warm when we are outside and it's cold.

Christmas morning we woke up and opened our stockings. Turns out Santa was really into gift-giving this year as well, as our stockings were definitely stocked to completion. We drank Coke, as is the tradition in my family. It serves as a nonspoken reminder of my Maw and how much she loved Christmas (and Coca-cola). After stockings I put the ham on and we opened our presents from each other. Around 12:30 we tried to get on the Webcam to open presents with my family, but the online call kept getting dropped so we just opened them over the phone. This was the hardest part of the day because we could tell exactly what all we were missing. It was very bittersweet. Then we used the XBox to watch Lee's fam open presents. After all the presents were opened we ate our dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, bread and green beans. My ham was unbelievably good and we are still eating the leftovers, 5 days later. Later that eve we went to Benn and Laura Oltmann's house and had dinner and played games. They just moved here from Oregon and couldn't go home for Christmas either, so it was nice to be able to hang out with people in a similar situation.

Friday eve my friend Ann threw me a birthday party at the Cheesecake Factory. It was lots of fun to be with friends for my birthday. I had been telling everyone I was getting an ipod for Christmas, but when I realized I didn't get one, Lee just told me that he was waiting for a newer version of the Zune to come out, and I just accepted his excuse at face value. One of our friends gave me an ipod case and said, "You got one, right?" So I had to explain that I didn't, actually. Lee told everyone that he was planning on getting me one, but then he saw this bread maker and decided to get that instead. (The bread maker is great, by the way, we used it for the first time last night and it worked really well). Anyways, his story made everyone laugh and at the end of dinner I opened Lee's last present for me and it was, of course, my Ipod Touch. Now I have a constant soundtrack of my life, because I listen to my ipod everywhere. Or, that was the plan at least, but apparently Lee doesn't like that plan because we were grocery shoppin last night and he took my earphones away, saying, "No Alecia. We're shopping together. I want you with me." I was only listening with one earphone, anyways...I could so hear him still. But, I was reminded of the times I've seen families together, but not, and decided lee was probably right in insisting that there is no ipod during family time. However, right now, I'm either with Lee or at work. Good thing I can use it at work!