And with it comes lots of pre-teen angst. Right now as I write my daughter is arguing with a friend of hers on the phone. Her friend is very sensitive and gets easily hurt and offended. CootieGirl wanted to take a break from talking and her friend got upset and basically said, “I never want to talk to you again.” Kind of a hot-headed response to a simple request. I’m sure my daughter wasn’t tactful when she said she wanted to take a break from talking, but even so. She wasn’t saying she didn’t want to be friends anymore – just to take a break from talking. *sigh*
In other news, Denis and I continued to stock up on Christmas decorations over the weekend and I think we will have a killer display next year. I emailed the HOA to ask them if I could do one thing in particular that I thought would be really cute, and they wrote back today and gave me approval to do it next year. YAY! I’m super-excited about next year’s display and wish it was already Thanksgiving 2015 so we could begin putting everything out again. It’s a sickness.
Work has been dead quiet – due to the holidays hardly anyone is working and as a result my days are interminable. Fortunately, I have a half day on Wednesday and a half day on Friday, so I’ve got that going for me. I’m glad my boss was able to take so much time off – she took very little vacation time in 2014 and she totally deserved to take 2 weeks off to spend with her family here in the Carolinas as well as the Midwest where her husband’s family lives.
Christmas was a fun, low-key day here at the Cootie household. I worked all three services at our church on Christmas Eve and then we drove over to someone’s house to hang out for a bit. Upon arriving home we let the kids each open one gift before going to bed. We let them pick. CG ended up picking a gift from her dad and me – a white oxford shirt and five bowties. She was very happy about that and has already worn a few of them in the past few days. CootieBoy opened a gift from Marmie and Pop – his own TARDIS ornament and some cash. He loved that he and I now have matching TARDIS ornaments.
As for Christmas morning, I told the kids not to wake us up until 7 a.m., and at 6:59 a.m. we heard CG running up the stairs to wake us up. We slowly made our way downstairs and after a few yawns and stretches we started passing out presents. I got some clothes and a coat, a couple scarves, a couple DVDs, some books, and a couple other things. Denis’s big gift was the entire “Batman” 1960s TV series on Blu-Ray. Denis made a delicious prime rib for Christmas dinner – it was scrumptious and we enjoyed some of the leftovers last night as well. Then after dinner we finished the day by watching Christmas movies like A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation (which Denis had never seen before).
So the next post for me will be my list of books that I read in 2014. I’m hoping to finish the audiobook I’m listening to right now so it can be included on the list. I’ve read the book before, but it has been almost 30 years since I read it. I’ve got about 3 hours left and should be able to finish it by New Year’s Eve day with no problem. We’ll see. All I know is that picking out my favorite book of 2014 is going to be very easy this year.