Attended a fun-filled Christmas Eve party at the neighbours last night. A bit too much red wine to drink and lots of laughter. J spent the day cooking up a traditional Christmas meal and, from my perspective, spent her time well. Since it had been about 8 years since she’d cooked a turkey there was a bit of panic in the cooking stage. Luckily S (not me) was around to offer up her expertise.

I brought our video camera and some blank disks over to L & J’s and we recorded messages and snippets of the evening for Drew. C brought out his guitar and performed some impromptu songs. Hopefully Drew will be able to hear the words over our crazed giggling.

We did a secret Santa stocking exchange and had fun opening and showing off our gifts. C was a good sport – having been the victim of our sense of humour in gift purchases – and modeled the silly tree hat we gave him while strumming his guitar and singing.

I was loaded up with left over turkey and gifts before I left. I sucessfully avoided peeking at them until the morning.

Drew stood in line for hours in order to make his phone call home and we had a great talk. I opened my gifts while Drew was on the phone and learned that Drew had conspired with J in the purchase of my present. I wanted a new fancy scmantzy blender. We’d loaned our old one to J over the summer and while it was gone I’d decided that we should let J keep our blender because I wanted one of the new ones that crushes ice and pours the drinks from a tap on the container. Drew traditionally does his Christmas shopping Christmas eve. No shopping for Drew equaled no presents for me and thus no blender…

I actually whined about how disappointed I was that I wasn’t getting a blender from Drew because of his deployment while we were in the kitchen at J’s.

I don’t know how J kept a straight face while I whined.

Apparently J had picked up a blender for me when she was out shopping with Drew and I. Drew’s job was to keep me distracted while helping her pick it out. He did a fabulous job because I’d had no clue what J had bought – or that it was for me – when we spent the afternoon together. I bought her line about picking up a food processor for her kitchen hook, line and sinker.

True to my word I ignored all incoming phone calls while waiting for Drew’s call. I did manage to talk to my sister before she headed to our adopted family in Winnipeg for her Christmas dinner. I missed a call from Drew’s grandma and my mom. By the time I could call it seemed too late in the evening. I’ll have to return their calls tomorrow.

‘Twas a good Christmas all things considered. Tomorrow I’m going to go back to working on collecting more items for Drew’s next care package. I’ll need to transfer the videos we took to CD or DVD and I need to write a letter to go with it.

Hope you had a merry Christmas and were able to spend the day with your loved ones.

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