December 21-27, 2013

It's time to remember last year's Christmas week.

December 21. I remember lying in bed while I heard my mom talking on the phone. She relayed stories about Nathaniel to Sue, and she was talking to her friend Jackie and I heard her say she would have to tell me something. I found out that what she needed to tell me was a funny ambiguous statement that Jackie had misinterpreted the night before; my mom had texted her something like, "We are in Fillmore for a wedding, and the reception is terrible." She meant the cell service was terrible. Sometime that day, we went to Chuck-A-Rama. At the table, there was conversation about gay marriage being legal in Utah. My mom said she didn't think gay marriage should be illegal but she didn't like the way the law had been handled. My dad said her opinion was because she had listened too much to David; Susanne said she had lots of gay friends ("well, not a lot"), including a couple with an adopted kid, who Allie said was really cute. There was also talk about the movie Elf, which I don't watch. Allie asked why not, and I said it was because of language. She said, "There's not any inappropriate language in that movie," and Matt chimed in and said there was some. My mom also talked about a person in their primary having to give a heartrending lesson because she had a toddler die. I got a brownie covered with Christmas sprinkles, and I noticed that some of them had fall sprinkles. I got some peppermint hot chocolate as well. I think Jackie came to our house that day and asked if my mom had told me the "reception" story. Jackie said she thought, "That poor girl, having a terrible reception!" That night we got Arctic Circle for dinner. My mom got eggnog and gingerbread shakes, which looked identical, even though the advertising showed that the gingerbread one was a chocolatey color. We watched Miracle on 34th Street. Allie was with us, and said, "This reminds me of Saving Mr. Gates, even though I've never seen it." I mouthed to my mom what an incredibly weird thing that was to say.

December 22. In the morning, my parents pointed out to me an ad in the newspaper with a hilarious typo:

That afternoon, I made gingerbread, using both a special Christmas cookie sheet and Christmas cookie cutters. Frosting was made and I used it to add details to the gingerbread cookies. I also made wassail. Then we watched the DVD of the MoTab/King's Singers concert.

December 23. I went with my mom to perform various Christmas tasks. (I know Allie was with us at some point, but I don't remember her being with us at the beginning.) We went to a mall in Salt Lake because my mom wanted to get slippers for my grandma. She asked a saleslady, "Where is the lingerie?" and I thought "Where are the slippers?" would have been a more appropriate and more accurate question. We met up with Sue, Nicole, and their two boys. We traipsed all over the mall, including stopping in a store with earrings in case I wanted to get them for Allie. There was a guy working for an LDS DVD company who tried to offer us a free movie; I felt bad that everyone ignored him. When we went to the Hallmark store, Nathan/Wallace was playing in fake snow and yelling at anyone else who tried to play in it. We admired their monthly Peanuts ornaments and I ended up getting an ornament of Jack Skellington on his little automobile from Christmas Town. Allie, ever obsessed with playing with Wallace, rode with Sue while my mom and I went some other places. I remember having some minty candies in the car, and we went to a shoe store to see if they had slippers that my mom wanted to get for Grandma. Then we went to a Sprint store to get my Grandpa a smartphone. They didn't have any blue phone covers, so my mom got a green one instead. It seems they also gave us some headphones. The rest of the family went to go see Saving Mr. Banks at the theater, but since the movie doesn't fit my standards, I didn't want to see it. I went to Walmart and Target. Walmart was very busy, and I think I was annoyed at a cart in the parking spot. I had to park the car, move the cart, then pull completely in the spot. It seems that as I was taking the cart back to the store, a lady took it from me, since there weren't any carts there (I wasn't planning on using a cart anyway). I looked at Christmas CDs, but I didn't get any. Then I went to Target, where I got earrings for Allie. I was delighted to see a set of holiday socks--socks for Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and the Fourth of July. Of course I had to buy it. I also bought some red and green Goldfish crackers. Then I waited around in the car while I waited for the movie to be over, trying to watch YouTube music videos. After the movie, we all went to Sears and looked at clearance Christmas stuff; Sue gave us the Lego set Peter had bought for my nephews. Then we wanted to go somewhere for dinner; since my grandparents were with us we went to Zupas. My mom got a dessert to share, but there weren't any seasonal desserts. I showed Wallace my Nightmare before Christmas shirt, and my mom mentioned that when I was a kid I would have my thumb in my mouth, my finger in my nose, and another finger in my belly button. We watched my grandparents drive off, my grandpa driving somewhat recklessly, not using his blinker and such. My mom said, "What do you wanna bet they die while he's driving?" My dad had had some kind of dental work that day, so on our way home my mom went to Orange Leaf so we could get frozen yogurt, one of his favorite things. Of course, I was delighted to see that not only were there three Christmas flavors of yogurt, there was an abundance of Christmas toppings. We went home and gave the yogurt to my dad. That night my mom and I watched Christmas for a Dollar, and I was ashamed to admit that I liked it.

December 24. Strangely, I don't remember what happened this day. I know we watched White Christmas, and I certainly was packing for California.

December 25. In the morning I turned on my Christmas playlist, but I just turned it on from the beginning. But one of my presents was Kelly Clarkson's Greatest Hits: Chapter One, which had "I'll Be Home for Christmas" on it, so I stopped my playlist, put the new song in it, and then put it on shuffle. When the Lower Lights' bluegrass version of "Once in Royal David's City" came on, my sister said that a famous actor was good at playing the banjo and tried to find it on Spotify on her phone. I think she tried to find other songs, and Matt said to her, "There's already music on." She tried to advertise Spotify to me; I said I heard that Google Play was the same idea, and Matt said that Spotify was better. I saw she had a Halloween playlist, and I said, "Wow, your Halloween playlist is bigger than mine," but I think most of the songs weren't actually Halloween songs. We finished our preparations to go to California, and then we went to my grandparents' house for brunch, where Nan snapped this picture:

Among other breakfast items, my grandparents made spiced apple cider. I was astonished that it tasted like the powdered kind, even though it wasn't. Peter remembered me quibbling about the usage of cider and wassail, but he got it backwards--I think wassail refers to the drink with apple and citrus, while cider is just apple cider. Jesse asked me what I got for Christmas, and I told him I got a slow cooker. He asked if I was going to make anything special in the slow cooker; I told him that I might make corned beef and cabbage at St. Patrick's Day, and he said, "That sounds terrible." Then we went to the airport. While we were waiting to board our plane, I was listening to Christmas music on my phone and experimenting with saving music in Google Play. I noticed a little thumbtack icon at the top of my phone, but at this time I didn't realize that I could swipe down from the top and see app notifications. On the plane, my dad told me that he had put a peppermint candy bar in my stocking because he thought I would like it because it was seasonal; he had gotten it from work. I was eating it and he asked if he could try some of it. When we landed, Ya-ping picked us up and drove us to their new apartment. Baby was excited to talk to us, but we couldn't call him "Baby" for long; it was on this trip that he told us he wasn't a baby and we couldn't call him that. In their room, he said, "That's brudden's bed," and I said, "That's your brother's bed?" to which he said "Uh huh!" I thought "brudden" was how he said "brother," but I soon learned it was how he said "Preston." He told me that he had "hixteeng buses," and for the rest of the visit he told us about his sixteen ("hixteeng") new houses and moms. He kept talking to us, and David said, "He's not usually this talkative." He took a Wii game to show us, and Preston yelled, "Don't shake it!" Nathaniel kicked him, and my mom said, "Oh, no," and he had to go to time out in his room and cried. Later, he jumped on his dad and said, "I almost [unintelligible] my dad." I said, "You almost what your dad?" to which he said, "Uh huh!" That made everyone laugh. (Apparently he said "killed.") That night we watched Monsters University (David had to keep telling Preston not to give things away) and then It's a Wonderful Life. Preston kept asking what was going on in It's a Wonderful Life.

December 26. When I got up, Ya-ping had made me a Jack Skellington hat. We took BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, to go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where my mom bought passes for us to be able to return to the museum and be more economic. We drank from the toilet drinking fountain and played with the other exhibits, including the spinning chairs, the ball jump that does math, the peg board where you can make marble ramps, and others. There were a lot of people there. We then went to a park across the street, in the middle of the city. My mom and Ya-ping walked to Subway to get us dinner while the boys played on the playground. I watched Nathaniel to make sure he was safe. Then we ate our dinner. We saw a man running shirtless, and my mom said he must be cold, but it really wasn't cold. David wanted to do running races with Preston, me, and my dad. I won every time. We walked past a place where people were ice skating, and I reflected that I probably will never go ice skating in my life. Then we returned to the BART station; David said to Franklin, "What's on Uncle Mark's shirt?" He said, "A cat in a space suit." David said, "Can cats really wear suits like that?"

December 27. I think I remember sitting on David's couch, listening to my music from 2013 and sharing my Facebook Year in Review.