I don't believe that Christmas is tomorrow. Normally I would be laying in bed all jittery from excitement wondering what I will be getting or nervous that maybe my family wont like the gifts I gave them. But none of thats here. I feel like I could wake up in the morning and not realize it's Christmas morning.
On the contrary though, today is the first day I felt the spirit of the season alive inside of me. My mom and I spent the morning baking the rest of the goodies for our annual neighbor goodie boxes. It has become a tradition to try and out do myself with cute packaging and yummier treats. This year I went a little over the top with the packaging and found myself hot gluing ribbon on for an hour..
Our treats were a classic treats compared to the latter. Peppermint bark, fudge, oatmeal cookies, sugar cookies, no-bake cookies and white chocolate, cranberry, pistachio shortbread cookies.
We spent the day lounging around the house, building up my arm strength with Just Dance 3 and lots of football on TV. My Grandmas, Tammy and Ian joined us for our classic Cheese Soup Christmas Eve dinner and to open presents.
Growing up, my dad would always read us the story of Christmas. I dont know what the book is call exactly, but it is the story of how Jesus was born and each page has a ornament that us kids place on the tree. This tradition disapeared for a few years but my mom brought it back this year.
We said my Dad looks like he needs a pipe and a robe. Next year..
Ian's first Christmas story ornament!
We had a little pre-Christmas hype by exchanging all our gifts too and from Grandma, Tammy and Ian since we wont see them till the evening tomorrow.
I got a Chef Nutcracker! LOL!
After family left, we headed over to Rocklin for the huge neighborhood light display. Now, if you dont live near this display or have never been.. it is almost undescribable and I warn you my pictures do NO justice to the maginifcance of it all. It was started many years a go when an artist started creating these wood cutouts and painting of cartoon charters and giving them to neighbors for thier Christmas displays. It has now expanded into a whole entire neighborhood which is decked head to toe with crazy lights, cutouts and other weird/cool displays. There is anything you can thing of from Disney charters, Santa and reindeer, Spongebob and there was even some Twilight cutouts this year. ( Unfortuately, I couldnt get a picture of that:( ) Autumn even came with us and was possibly more excited than the rest of us..
I tried to get pictures, but they really didnt turn out. They were blurry and washed out but here are a few!
My favorite was a scene right out of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation..
( Ignore the random people posing with Cousin Eddie)
Christmas is only 1 hour and 9 minutes away. I better hurry up and catch up with my Christmas spirit before I turn into old Scrooge and have spirits waking me up in the night.
Merry Christmas to all. May the Lord bless you with love, joy, and peace this year!
Until Next Time.
Jasmine
