Good morning everyone. It’s Monday once again and life has to go back to normal… I have SO much to do today, but I’m feeling really happy. Before I start my massive pile of chores, I wanted to share the highlights of the holiday with you guys.

🎄 Christmas Eve 🎄

To begin with, here is the outfit I wore for Christmas Eve. I felt pretty cute.

This pic is from the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Elliot was getting some cuddles from Christopher:

My mom and sis in law were already there from Wednesday night. We were waiting for my mom and our friend, to start Christmas Eve dinner. He got there much earlier than my mom so we played Monopoly. My sis in law won.

I lost first (no surprise there) so while they finished the game, I began to grate cheese for our cheese breads, and slightly grated my hand in the process. 😭

My mom finally arrived about 20 minutes before dinner was ready to be eaten. The food was amazing. Our friend and I worked on it together and I actually managed not to screw up anything too horribly. Or at all, actually. We had picaña, rice and beans, Russian salad, and cheese breads.

Kotoko wanted to sit at the table, so Christopher brought a tall chair for her. She stared at everything very intensely until she got a tiny piece of picaña for herself. 😅

I also got this cute picture of both of them together. It’s so sweet, I love it.

After that, we cleaned up and then we opened all our presents. I got a lot of wonderful things; my haul is shared at the end of this post. Our friend made wrapping paper angels on the floor but I didn’t take a picture fast enough so I just got this. The cats had fun with the paper too.

Then we exchanged our cards. Mostly, it was me having cards for people. My mom had mailed me hers earlier in the week, and Christopher did have one for me. But otherwise it was me giving cards to everyone as usual. 😅

There are things which I don’t share very openly on this blog (about my relationships and relationship dynamics, though if you follow my private Twitter you know what I mean). Maybe that will change a little this coming year, I don’t know. I may become more comfortable about it since our entire family is aware and, by and large, are all very lovingly (if teasingly) supportive of our lifestyle. But for now, I still wanted to share the two “cards” I made for the two people most important to me in the whole world, though they are a little edited for privacy:

These are actually 11″ x 14″ poster boards with printed construction paper on top, as well as felt, jewels, foam stickers, you name it. The characters were drawn digitally and carefully cut out. I put a lot of love into these things, and they were so big that I had to buy these large rolls of construction paper to make my own envelopes for them (and I decorated the envelopes too).

Then when the time came I was excruciatingly embarrassed to give them to the recipients, I ended up going into another room to look at Christopher’s card. 🙈

At the very end of the evening we began looking at our future cruise excursions again. Eventually our friend started screwing around with the page’s code… I’ll leave you to guess as to what his edits were.

(He has a bit of a warped sense of humor.)

🎅 Christmas Day 🎅

On Christmas Day, me, Christopher, and my mom and sis in law all went to Grandma’s house in Port St. Lucie to have Christmas lunch… dinner? It was at 3:00pm. And open presents for a second time. We had to wait while food still cooked so my sis in law, Christopher and I sat exactly like this for maybe two hours:

It was very cozy. Generally this part of the holiday is more stressful, for many reasons. It was this time too. But being on the couch with them like this, I was happy anyways.

For my gifts there, I got a few gift cards and this amazing snail plush that I’m naming Romaine:

After that we went to my mom in law’s house in Sebastian, to finally relax. I gave her roommate the presents that we had for her and she gave us two gift cards. There was a bit more present-opening, and once we’d sufficiently woken up from the meal stupor, we got an unnecessary (given our full stomachs) spread of amazing snacks set out, some alcohol, and the brand new retro Game Of Life that Christopher got for Christmas:

The rules were surprisingly detailed and difficult. Christopher was in charge of reading them as we went along.

For reasons that only Christopher and I really understood, me landing on this box was pretty funny so he took a picture:

In the end, my mom in law’s roommate won, but it was a close game. My sis in law HATED this game by the way. Haha. anyway here’s a photo of the resident pom, because I always have to post one:

🎁 My Christmas Haul 🎁

Ok, time to share my Christmas goodies! I’ll start with one of my favorite things. This was the present I got from Buddy, Sarah and Santa. I really wanted both of these and they were so much nicer in real life than I expected:

In particular the Daisy one is super adorable and really big for an Amiibo. I love them so, so much, I can’t wait to display them in my studio.

I’m pretty sure this book was from my sis in law. It starts to blur together who gave me what:

I already have one of these books (of a different sort, but same series) and they are super useful for writing!

From my friend Sammy (whom many of you may know as toddlergirl/babystar) I got this very cute set of Little People toys from my wish list. It’s characters from The Office!

Watching The Office with Christopher is a really sweet and important memory when it comes to our relationship so I’m super happy to have this set.

From my mom in law I got these adorable shoes that she had me pick during Black Friday:

From my mom I got this INCREDIBLE Jurassic World Legacy Brachiosaurus. It’s HUGE! I haven’t been able to put it together yet. I can’t wait!

Also from my mom I got this little gnome to put on the back porch. It matches another gnome she got me a while ago:

These cute little guys were from my mom in law. I love them so much! Can’t wait to put them around my studio as well.

It’s really nice that all of my family (pretty much) is so understanding and accepting of my Littleness that I can get presents like these for Christmas. It makes me very happy. 🥰

My mom got me a DYI mini library building kit:

Apparently, it’s supposed to look like this:

But it’s like, unbelievably small… It takes on average 20-40 hours to put together. I’m not sure I’ll have the patience. 😥 We’ll see. It’s a very cute concept, I just legitimately think it’s probably too hard for me.

I also got a bunch of gift cards. I don’t like to support Chik-Fil-A (that was from Grandma) but, she doesn’t know that and I’m not about to get into it. 😬

There was one other Amazon gift card, which I used to get more hangers for my clothes and this Sesame Street Bert and Ernie Tervis cup:

I gave the $10 gift card to Christopher as well as a small bit of cash and he put the rest of the money so I could have these games:

So now we’ll have even more games to play together when our friend moves in which is great. 😁

I also got a bunch of cute, funny earrings from my mom:

There was also the snail plush you saw earlier, and two t-shirts from my mom in law. I’ll share those when I wear them. One is a Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous shirt and the other one has a really cute little snail.

I’m super happy with all my gifts! I’m sure I’ll share more photos as I open boxes and put things together.

How was your Christmas? I hope you made lots of good memories! I know I did. And I hope to make many more good memories next year.