las aventuras de la Navidad

Christmas always brings a million adventures [I'm sure you all have many to share as well] and this Christmas hasn't been any different. I haven't been able to post because I've been living off the wireless tethering app I have on my phone. It limits how much I can do on the web but makes it possible to be able to catch up on things you guys have been posting. It's been so long since I've been able to post so I thought I'd catch you up on what I've been doing. But first things first, this morning, I woke up to Justing Bieber's "Baby" playing like a broken record throughout my morning. But after I overcame that I went on with my day [I'm not a huge JB fan, so this morning's song came as quite a surprise]. I'll save you and not post the lyrics because quite honestly I'd be posting the same four words over and over ;) [jk, it's not that bad].

But moving on, I always spend my Christmas' at my grandma's house because my extended family has a huge Christmas present exchange on Christmas Eve at her house which is an hour and a half away so Mom, Jeremy, and I always stuck around and we opened gifts in Grandma's living room.  I'm not sure if I've ever woken up at my own house on Christmas morning but since Jeremy and Jen have been married it's been lonely because every other Christmas I'm stuck alone opening gifts. :( So this year was a lonely year, after the huge party which included yummy treats like 

 and

And presents like 

and

 Enjoying the company of family like

and 

After enjoying a night full of laughter and love, my mom, my grandma and my step dad sat around the living room preparing ourselves for a good nights rest until mom looks over at me and says "Lin, why don't you go ahead and open you gifts so you won't have to wake up so early?" 

This idea sounded very weird but at the same time very intriguing so I took the offer. Not too long after opening did I rip off the paper on this baby..

Canon 55-250mm Zoom lens

Fiestaware Silverware, matches my dishes great!

Spanish-English Bible for my Bilingual self

and TONS of these

a few of the MANY socks I received!

The rush was so intoxicating until I realized it was over. All the waiting, the shopping and the excitement had already come and gone. The next morning I woke up to my mom kissing me on the forehead and saying "Merry Christmas!" I didn't get up though because I knew I'd be up alone on Christmas morning as my mom went to visit my step dad's family. It was super bittersweet. This realization made me quickly snap back to the real reason for Christmas Season. Jesus Christ birth. I took the day to reflect on the gracious gift that God himself gave to us and it was special. 

But this did NOT mark the end to my Christmas. That night my cousins and I usually go out to a movie because there aren't many other places that are open. But this tradition got cut when my cousins Chelsea and Dustin realized that we were the only single ones who weren't spending the evening exchanging gifts with our significant others. We decided to watch "Toy Story 3" because its super cute and then had time to watch the copy of "17 again" that I had gotten for Christmas. It was a black friday find at Walmart for $2.00. Nice, I tell you!

After a long day of reflection, singleness and movies, Christmas ended with an immense amount of anticipation for snow. Somehow the snow had missed us until now and we were expected to get 2-3 inches [my grandma's house never usually gets a lot of snow so this was super exciting]. I went to sleep super late [probably around 3am] because I was watching my favorite show [House Hunters and House Hunters International ;)] but it still wasn't snowing. I just knew I'd wake up and there would at least be a dusting of snow! I woke up the phone ringing [at 5:53am, who calls at that time?] to my aunt calling and telling us to look out the window and there was at least 3 inches and it was still coming down strong. By the time I woke up, which I'd rather not talking about the hour, my grandma and mom had gotten up but gone back to bed because we lost power. Apparently, my grandma's road loses power if its the slightest bit windy so this was not a surprise to them but at this point I didn't care, I just wanted to play. This. was. my. glory. I was like a kid on Christmas morning waking up my mom and telling her to play with me. I had gotten the excitement that I missed this past Christmas morning but in a different way. She poked around to get ready after I had rushed to throw on as many layers as I could find. We decided to go to my Uncles house [who had electricity] to eat lunch [haha, leftovers, of course] and that was fine with me because it gave me someone to play with. I sucked down some food and me and my cousin Chelsea [who is 23] and myself [who is 20] went out with her brother [Tanner, 14] to build a snow man. Jared [cousin, 17] and Dustin [cousin, 25] had no faith in us but we did it! Despite the fact that the snow was hard to pack and we couldn't find anything to work for buttons, eyes and a nose. We came up with this guy [yes, he has a mohawk]

After suffering outside in what I call a "blizzard," we settled in to watch Charlie St. Cloud, which if you haven't seen it, you should. It's a great movie, I've seen it twice and both times I have been brought to tears [well, and Zak Efron is hot;)] This ended the fun though, we tried to get my grandma to come to civilization and stay at my uncles house cause he had electricity but she told my mom and aunt that she wasn't leaving her house and that did it. We went back to that cold, dark street. Still no electricity, except for one man who I guess had a generator and decided to keep all of his Christmas lights blinding the whole street. Not funny. We sat around my grandmas house with no lights, a couple of oil lamps and candles, and one mighty flashlight and suffered. I don't know how the amish do it. It was horrible. I have never been so bored. I guess that shows you how fast pace our world is now. Anyways, my mom, step dad, aunt, uncle, Jared, Dustin and got so bored that by the time we had started to go crazy we were singing camp fire songs. We sang Kumbaya and Amazing Grace, my aunt even busted out her favorite The National Anthem [we all secretly covered our ears and picked at her pitchy cover]. But this made it fun. Finally we got to a point that we started singing any song we could think of. By the light of a couple candles we sand "Praying for Daylight" by Rascal Flatts and no lie as we finished the song our lights came on. We were all very surprised because it was only 11pm and the company told us that it would at least be 4am until we got it back. We cheered and said our goodbyes and hit the beds.  Here is a picture of the darkness we experienced to round up the longest post ever! [sorry its so long, but if you made it through the whole thing :) you're perfect and i love you]

sitting around by the candle light