Christmas in Seattle

Happy New Year everyone! I’ve been super slack and have only recently gotten around to blogging about our first Christmas in Seattle.

First of all we opened Greg and Harin’s Christmas present. We’d actually thought it was food because neither of the cats would leave it alone but it actually turned out to be a catnip body pillow. Seriously that’s what it was called. Mouse went nuts over it.

James was delighted because he’d been feeling guilty that we hadn’t gotten the cats anything for Christmas. But they have no cause for complaint because they’re getting this in the new year.

Image from Feline Furniture

Look at Mouse. He’s all like “What’s that? A cat gym and a sweet body pillow?”

Cat and I sent presents to each other so that we would each have stuff to open on Christmas. I discovered later that James can actually mail stuff from work at Amazon rates so I would have saved a lot of postage that way. Oh well, next year! I got her some Oakley Necessity Asian Fit sunglasses because I knew she wanted a pair of Asian Fits and Oakleys are heaps more expensive in Australia.

Image from Oakley

Oh and you know how in Australia we use “heaps” interchangeably with “a lot”? As in “there are heaps (a lot) of people”. That is not a thing here.

James kept Cat’s present for me at work so I wouldn’t accidentally find it and, I dunno, rip it open in a frenzy of presentwant. She’d gotten one of Scott’s drawings and had it made in a decal for me to put on my snowboard and helmet! Apparently James and Cat collaborated to match the sticker colour to my pants and helmet strap colour.

These were actually one sticker but James had the idea to cut it in half and put one sticker on each half of my helmet which I think works really well.

I’m so happy with how it turned out! I’ve gone snowboarding once since Christmas and although I fell a few times the stickers remained intact. Boo for falling but yay for sticker integrity. I’m keeping the other set for a future helmet because I think it would be a waste to put them on my board since it’s always covered with snow.

Cat also got me a Rumble Roller that I’ve been coveting for awhile (and which came in very handy post-snowboarding).

Image from Amazon

Also a smaller massage ball for me to roll my feet over. =)

I should add that the way James got me to open the presents was he’d get me to close my eyes while he put the present in my hand (because they weren’t wrapped). After the massage roller he was like “close your eyes – there’s more!” and I was all “ooOOoooh!”

And then he put the little massage ball in my palm and was like “Hm. I probably should have done those in the opposite order.”

Also it turned out that James had sneakily gotten me a Christmas gift even though we had agreed that our snowboards would be our mutual gifts! I think James was worried I would miss Cousin Christmas too much so he wanted there to be more presents. He got me this awesome beanie which is like the perfect slouch beanie.

Image from Eternal Snow

I’ve been looking for a good beanie for ages! So that was pretty awesome. =D

James’ parents got us white and red wine glasses and also some champagne flutes which was handy because we had been gradually breaking our cheap Ikea wine glasses. We arrived in America with 5 wine glasses and were down to 2!

We actually got to use them for Christmas dinner because the day before we invited Mike and Angie to come over for Christmas dinner and this way we didn’t have to serve champagne in water glasses. We had a pretty low-key Christmas dinner – champagne with cheese and biscuits before the meal along with some devilled eggs that Angie had made. For the main we had Virginia ham, dinner rolls, stuffing, roast potatoes and green beans with some mulled wine from Angie as well. Then for dessert we had Christmas pudding with brandy butter and Mike’s eggnog.

Soooo full.

So even though we didn’t get to spend Christmas with our families it was still a really nice holiday. I know that James was worried I would miss our family traditions (which I did) but it was also nice starting to make our own traditions.