"Christmas Fun!!... And Bye-Bye 2012!!"

Whew…. Well, it’s official…. 2012 is sooooo gone. A new year is now upon us along with a new promise of fun and frolic for us all. Ahhhh…. but first…. even though 2013 has begun, there’s still some time to drink some hot cocoa and do a quick last “Diary” post of 2012′s final memories here at the ol’ “Litterbox” to bring all my gentle visitors up to date on the latest goings-on in the life of your Favorite Catgirl Princess.

Christmas. Naturally… after the fun we had at Thanksgiving, there was no doubt that we’d wouldn’t want to miss out on our invitation to celebrate again with Sandra and the family. (Family Holiday Traditions…. looks like we now have one!! Yay!!) I got lucky this year and was able to steal away 3 whole days for Carolyn and myself to spend together… which is actually quite a lot for lil’ ol’ me to manage. So? What the heck did we do with ourselves?

C’mon…. you all know the drill by now. Yes…yes… That’s your cue. It’s time to “Read On” and find out for yourselves…. silly!!

The days leading up to Christmas were hectic as always. There never… ever…. seems to be enough time for me to manage all the things I’d like to do, and I’m guessing that’s some basic “Karmic Rule of the Universe” or something along those lines… sigh.

Case in point: Carolyn’s Christmas party at the college. Naturally that happened on Saturday night…. and just as naturally I had to work the dinner shift that evening. She’s a good sport…. and knows that I didn’t really have a choice, but I still know she was disappointed at having to go alone. Darn…. But… the upside to this was that we’d have all of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday for ourselves….. Sweet!!

Sunday was selfishly just for us. No visitors…. no phoning friends and family to share Holiday cheer….. just the two of us and Ting-Ting in our cozy lil’ apartment, lounging around in our Pj’s, drinking mugs of Hot cocoa, and wasting the day away together. Mmmmm…. well…. OK…. I can’t actually say we wasted the day. **Ahem**…. Let’s just say that we certainly managed to make up for my missing out on Carolyn’s Christmas Party in a totally acceptable fashion that left the both of us very happy indeed and would make Santa extremely confused how we could somehow end up on both the “Naughty” and the “Nice” lists this year….

In fact… although we’d originally intended to head out to Sandra’s late Sunday afternoon, it ended up being sooooo indulgently nice to have each other for some quality “Us” time that we postponed leaving till super early Monday morning. Somehow we felt the family would understand… or at least I was pretty certain wise lil’ Sandra would.

We’d packed a few things for our excursion earlier in the week, along with our gifts for the family, so in the crisp pre-dawn of Monday morning we headed out south, hoping the crazy snowstorm we got last Thursday wouldn’t repeat itself during the trip. In that, we were lucky. The weather behaved itself beautifully and with our early start we got quite the jump on Holiday traffic, allowing us to stop for a breakfast along the way and still get to Sandra’s before noon.

The family was already in the Holiday swing by the time we arrived, and once we got there it was so incredibly comfortable slipping right into the thick of things with them. Now… although we had our presents for them to slip under the tree and join with all the others for the “big day”, there was one waiting there for me that was not going to be much of a “surprise”….

Yep…. having heard all about Aunt Miyuki’s big “Movie Collection”, Maddie had insisted that buying me some more horror movie goodies was just the perfect idea of a gift. Oh yes…. Carolyn had told them all about my huge pile of boxes filled with weird lil’ movies from just about everywhere…. movies that just about nobody here in the US had ever heard of let alone watched. The kids could scarcely believe all that of course… but Maddie decided that there had to some good ones I hadn’t already seen and begged her Mom to let her pick them out. Sandra knew from Carolyn the voracious appetite I have for silly horror films….. and knew better than to just “wing it” in the hopes of getting ones I didn’t already have. That’s why… earlier this last month, she’d quietly snuck behind the kids backs to give me a call and find out just what US films I hadn’t seen already and might be thinking of buying. Smart lady…. just like her sister.

So…. with that, I’d given them a list of Region 1 films I’d been considering and she ever so carefully “steered” the kids towards those. My “sister-in-law” is  soooo sneaky, sneaky, sneaky!!!

With very little real “surprise” for me, it was nonetheless a sweet idea…. and the kids were so darn proud to have picked them out that when Sandra suggested we crack that particular present open early and have a Family Christmas Movie Fest… popcorn, crackers, cheese and assorted hors d’oeuvres, the idea was gleefully accepted by all. Of the five DVD’s I let the kids pick the ones we’d watch, and so our Christmas Eve was spent with the killer Aussie shark fest “Bait 3D”, and the cannibal atomic mutants of “Chernobyl Diaries”.

My goodness!! It was soooo darn much fun laughing at the all stupid parts…. having both Sandra and Carolyn making “that face” during the gory parts (Soooo remarkable to me how so alike they both are as sisters while being so different in other ways all at the same time…)…. and cheering right along with the kids during the gooshy, bloody parts. It was a great time, and I loved sharing my hobby with Carolyn and her family… and I know it really made the kids happy feeling they’d come up with the perfect gift for lil’ ol’ me.

Eventually the movies came to an end… and the kids went off to bed, with a couple of enthusiastic hugs for their favorite Aunts… and then Carolyn and I got to chat for a while with Sandra and her hubby before heading off to bed ourselves. The perfect end to the perfect evening.

Christmas day was an early one, of course…. somehow kids have an amazing ability to wake early that day despite always being such slugs on most school days, hehehehe!! There was the opening of presents… and this time out Carolyn and I pooled our resources to give the kids something extra nice… an iPad for each of them for them to use at school (Yeah… right… We also gifted Sandra and Allan with one of those newfangled coffee/ espresso machines… you can never have too many things for makin’ coffee, after-all…. (And we figured dedicated coffee lovers like us would definitely get to sip the wonderful brewed results whenever we visited from now on too… gotta think ahead, eh?)

Now us…. we didn’t do too darn badly at all. No sir. Along with my DVD’s from the kids, Sandra and hubby bought for me the nicest set of stainless steel kitchen knives and a carving board…. (Not that I don’t have my own set of knives at home already, but these were really nice and showed a lot of thought… never a bad thing. Ahhhh… and a real cook can never have too darn many knives. ) Carolyn got a gorgeous fur trimmed coat along with a new hat and scarf. Oooohhh! Somebody certainly knew how much she hates the cold.

Now me…. I’d been at my wits end for months trying to find just the perfect thing for my sweetie, but finally settled on a cute turquoise and silver bracelet I found back in November that she absolutely seemed to love. Yay!! Me? I got a silver brooch in the shape of …. **gasp**… a cat from her. (Hmmm? Channeling my essential inner essence is she?) It’s almost a dead match for the ring she bought me for Valentines day last year. I just love the way they go together.

We spent the rest of the day pretty much making merry till late afternoon when we reluctantly had to leave… Carolyn still had a few days vacation, but lil’ ol’ me had to be back to work the very next day… d’ohh!! Ahhhh well…. Ting-Ting would be missing us and I never like leaving her alone for too many days, so heading back was definitely in order.

*****

I wish I could say New Years Eve was as nice as our Christmas, but as always, it was a big “dining out” evening. So lil’ ol’ me had to be content with working the dinner shift and making it home with just an hour to spare before the year ran out and finding  a warm, cozy bed surrounded by scented candles and my sweetie waiting to help ring in 2013 in style. A bit cliche perhaps…. but I certainly found it more than enough holiday for this girl!

Anyways…. that’s how things went this year. My birthday rolls around later this week, so undoubtedly there will be more of Carolyn’s sweet attentions to make this wee Catgirl happy… even if I am finally turning the big “4-0″. So much for those heady days of youth….. Carolyn says she can’t wait to be able to officially call me “her old lady”. Hmmmmm!!! Just wait till her birthday rolls around… we’ll see who’s the “old lady” then…..

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