Christmas!

11 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!

I'm soooooooooooo excited! I like a lot of things about Christmas. It is my all-time favorite holiday. I like being with family, I'm a tradition freak, baking treats, the music, and of course PRESENTS!

I love both giving and receiving presents. Wrapping them is pretty fun too. This year I think I'm mostly getting lots of new clothes. But I'm happy! Apparently Santa thinks a couple things on my list are a little too pricey and aren't going to work. So I'll have to try for a new phone and a DSI next year. (Santa doesn't want me to have unlimited internet access, so no to the DSI. Plus it's $180.) I'm hoping to get a new iHome for my iPod to charge it, play music, etc. I always get some books on Christmas too. I asked for the Gallagher Girls series and the sequel to Hunger Games.

Mmmm. I love Christmas treats. My mom used to make this really good fudge every Christmas, but she's kind of made that my job. She buys everything you need to make it, and we make it a few times during December. Today my wonderful mother made sugar cookies with yellow frosting and crushed candy canes on top. I like how the neighbors bring you lots of random treats that are really good. We always bring things like fudge and spritz cookies around to people. My mom makes spritz cookies in the shapes of like Christmas trees and other Christmassy objects. Basically, Christmas is just a delicious time of the year.

When I say that I'm a tradition freak, that's kind of an understatement. It drives my mom crazy how I always want things to be exactly the same, and I don't want them to change. Even a week later, it is driving me crazy that our Christmas tree is in our family room instead of in the living room by the window. It just doesn't feel right. It still looks great, we have a bunch of matching ornament sets, random ornaments we've picked up over the years, and ribbons all around it. And of course our twinkling yellow lights. I love Christmas lights. I strongly encourage my parents to buy lights and have my dad climb up on the roof to put them up. This year we have blue icicle lights on our house, reddish ones on our evergreen tree, and clear net lights on the bushes. They even went all out and put lights on the trees around our pond in the backyard. There is also a cute little lit up snow man by our porch. I put up my own lights in my bedroom around my walls. They are red, white, and green.

Another tradition that is important to me is the food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve, my family snacks on cheese balls and crackers, deviled eggs, olives, etc. during the day, and that night my mom makes these really good chicken strips that she rolls around in crushed up Ritz. Then we dip them in homemade honey mustard sauce. On Christmas day, we eat the mini boxes of cereal from our stockings for breakfast. We kind of eat whatever, or leftovers for lunch. Then for dinner we have turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, jell-o, assorted yummy sides, and cranberry juice/Sprite mix as a drink. For dessert we get together with our second cousins for pie. Just thinking about it all makes me hungry.

If I weren't with my family, Christmas wouldn't matter. On Christmas Eve we always get together with the cousins from my mom's family. We have a talent show where we all like sing a song, or play piano, or something. Then we read the Christmas story from Luke out loud. Christmas morning, everyone is excited to show each other what you get whenever you open a present. During the day we relax while each other and enjoy our presents. It's just a great feeling to be together with so many people you love.

Christmas music is a HUGE part over why I love Christmas so much. I listen to it on the radio throughout the whole season and sing it around the house. And right now I love it even more. After my very depressed post last time about not making the musical, I was singing "Where Are You Christmas" as a solo during a choir performance. The director of our school musical and another judge were there watching. Afterward, the director came up to me and told me that if that had been my audition, I would have made it for sure. Soooo, she decided to count it as my audition and put me in the musical! I am SO excited now! Christmas music has a whole new meaning to me, and I watched "The Grinch" twice this weekend.

Christmas is the best holiday ever and I can't wait!