Christmas

After weeks of studying hard and thinking of nothing but school, Christmas finally came and cleared my mind of all things academic. Christmas Eve was spent hurrying around Putney grocery stores to get all of the food needed for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. It wasn't as expensive as I anticipated. Perhaps I should cook big meals like this more often, and feed myself for a week on only a few £s! Christmas Eve night was spent baking cookies. Somehow, I only managed to muster the energy for one type of cookie. I guess I have more baking to do soon.

Woke up early on Christmas morning and, like a little kid, rushed to open my presents from friends new and old, and family far away. This year things came in USPS FlatRate boxes instead of pretty packages, and I liked it even more than usual. I am always surprised at how blessed I am with such amazing friends and family at this holiday time of year. Thanks to everyone on this side of the pond and the other who sent me love and happy wishes this year, and to those who continue to be amazing friends even though I'm so far away.

After opening presents and having peanut butter toast breakfast (typical), I headed to Pepijn's kitchen to begin the fun day. We cooked up some delicious afternoon snacks, listened to Disney music, and enjoyed each other's company. When our bellies were full of appetisers, we settled down to watch Christmas Vacation (my absolute favourite Christmas movie since I was a kid). Thanks to LoveFilm, it was free on instant streaming!

After the movie, we started working on the main course dinner. We had decided that pot roast would be an easy and yummy Christmas dinner. I prepared the roast and popped it into the oven for 3 hours. Patrick whipped up a salad to go with the roast. We skyped with Pepijn's dad, watched NBA live streaming online, and continued to just enjoy being together. A few hours later, we sat down to a delicious meal.

We stuffed ourselves with roast, potatoes, carrots, salad, and rolls. Delicious! We drank, cracked some Christmas Crackers, and then sat down to a good ol' fashioned game of LIFE! This was the new Adventurers version of life, involving new jobs, and a completely new board. Some of the rules were different so we didn't fully understand how to play the game until we finished the game through once. After we read through the rules one more time, we played again. Patrick won, and Pepijn's life sucked, but we still had lots of fun!

Christmas Cracker Jokes :)

I spent "Second Christmas Day" (something new to me) watching the Lion King, Home Alone 1, and several basketball games. We reheated the roast for dinner, finished it, and played more games. This time we played a game called Labyrinth, which I had never played before. Pepijn made up for his crappy Life-skills from the previous day by completely annihilating Patrick and me in Labyrinth. Still, FUN! After dinner we played yet another game of LIFE with the modified rules we had come up with the night before. The new rules made the game much more interesting and exciting.

Today is a day of rest, as if the past two lazy days weren't enough. Today I clean my room and get my life back into oder. Thank you, Patrick and Pepijn, my two favourite Dutch boys, for making this Christmas one worth remembering and cherishing. Love you both!