The Christmas present spread, originally uploaded by elsaturnino.

Christmas is one of those days that you can really grow to anticipate and then when it comes you end up a bit disappointed.

Not this year though!

Colleen and I have been extremely excited for Christmas this year and it really lived up to all of our expectations. We had a tree full of presents, a couple wonderful new kitties, and (most importantly) lots of love. The only unfortunate thing about today has been that it has left us both exhausted. Hopefully I’ll be able to relay a lot of the good stuff that went on but Colleen might have to come by tomorrow and wrap things up. Without further ado though, let’s get it poppin’.

The day started like this:

Colleen: “Can we open presents yet?”
Sat: “What time is it?”
Colleen: “5:20″
Sat (rolling on his side): “No!”

Time passes…

Colleen: “Can we open presents yet?”
Sat: “What time is it?”
Colleen: “6 o’clock”
Sat: “No”

More time passes…

Colleen: “Can we open presents yet?”
Sat: “What time is it?”
Colleen: “6:30″
Sat (in a huff): “No!”

Colleen couldn’t contain her self any longer and got out of bed around 7 while I slept until 7:30 or so. We decided to have breakfast first so, as Colleen put it, I wouldn’t be cranky.

Bad idea.

We were both so excited that we didn’t really have an appetite so halfway through our bowls of oatmeal we just gave up and started in on the presents. Colleen had one gift that she wanted me to open up immediately. I was a bit puzzled but I went with it and unwrapped it; it was an Ultrapod Digital! It was the one thing on my list that I really wanted and the butthead had me totally tricked into thinking that she hadn’t gotten it for me. Baaad Colleen. It was good I opened that up first because it gave me the perfect apparatus for setting up the digital camera to make a video of our unwrapping ceremony.

Our plan was to first open the gifts from my mom, then open the gifts from Colleen’s parents, then open the gifts we got each other. The unwrapping was fast and furious and we just missed fitting the video all on our 4GB memory card. There were way too many gifts to give a detailed listing of but here are some of the highlights:

Colleen’s gifts:

  • P-touch personal labeler
  • Hot glue gun
  • Wet/dry hair straightener
  • Electric blanket
  • Sandwich maker
  • Garmin eTrex Legend Handheld GPS

Sat’s gifts:

  • Veganomicon Cookbook
  • Chia Herb Garden
  • Kick-ass tea infuser
  • Bike Multi-tool (Secret Santa)
  • Wireless cycle computer (Secret Santa)
  • Remote Controlled Helicopter

You can check out all the pics from today (and the past few days) on my Flickr page.

It wasn’t really a surprise but my Secret Santa was Jen (Day) Rooney (i.e. the Illinois Jen Rooney). Thanks so much, Jen! Sadly, Colleen didn’t know who her Secret Santa was and still doesn’t because she has yet to receive anything from them. Boo to whoever you are!

We spent the next couple hours playing around with our new stuff before I got my butt in gear whipped up our Christmas mini-feast. We were going to do it last night but I got tired of cooking after baking 5 dozen cut-out cookies so we pushed it today. On the menu was Tofurky (for me), Turkey Mignon (for Colleen), parslied potatoes, green beans and a cherry pie. I used the new 12″ Calphalon hard-annodized everyday pan to saute the green beans (thanks Momma Garcia for this gift) and, of course, used the sweet new knives we got. I wanted to also fix a sweet potato pie but I was too distracted by gifts to make it ahead of time and since we had the cherry pie it wasn’t imperative to make it.

Other than us playing around with our presents all day (Colleen found that there are a ton of geocaches around our place), not much went down today. We caught the final episode of our dirty little pleasure, A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila. I’m not sure what it was about that show but we were both instantly hooked and we watched nearly all the episodes (some even twice!). I was a bit surprised to see Bobby win it but the way these “reality” shows goes, it doesn’t matter. I gave Bobby and Tila a month together. Colleen wasn’t as optimistic, giving them two weeks, max. You can watch it for yourself on MTV’s Shot at Love website.

We were going to play some more “Brain Game” tonight but we got sucked into the show. We played a couple games last night and, let me say, it was much more difficult than I thought it would be. There are 20 total “games” (each having 5 rounds) with each successive game being harder than the previous one. We tried the two easiest ones, which I fully expected to be easy enough for pre-schoolers today. Imagine my shock when I got just over 50 (out of 100) while Colleen hovered around the mid 30’s. The next game we got much higher scores but it was still a hardy challenge. Hopefully we get better at it as time goes on. If you are in the San Diego area (or will be soon), let us know if you want to stop by and play some time.

Well, I guess that is about it for this post for me. I guess I had a bit more wind in me than I had initially led myself to believe. Hopefully Colleen and I will continue our brisk pace so that we win back some of the people who abandoned us when we were hardly writing any posts. Hopefully we’ve won you over for good too :)

~ Sat