Christmas, Christmas time is here!

This Christmas we headed home to California. The original plan was to leave at 5 am, but we didn't end up leaving until 8am. Delay was due in part to me NOT sleeping and trying to finish Christmas presents, Nic only getting 3 hours of sleep and still having to pack. Every time we head down to Cali I say I'm going to get my packing done early and it NEVER happens. *Sigh* All is well.

Heading down, we got to stop in Lincoln and pick my niece (Jacob's daughter) Mia. Unlike most times she was happy to see us, we were greeted with hugs! I'm sure her mom did a lot of prepping with her. Laurel is really nice about letting us picking up Mia to bring her down to Merced to spend some time with her while we are in town. I'm so grateful for that. Mia is growing up sooo much. She is very independent and wants to do things all by herself. Mia and Nic got to be best buds. It was so cute to see her cuddle on Nic and want to spend some time with him. I can't wait for Nic to be able to do that with our kids-some day. We got to have two Christmas' with Mia. Well, more like Mia got to have two Christmas'. One was with us before she left to go back home and the other one was with her mom on Christmas Day. The last day there it was getting hard for her (being away from your other family for five days can be rough), so I told her that I ran into Santa Claus and he told me that she had been such a good girl that she got have two Christmas'. She was a excited but we had to make a call to Santa (aka Nic) so he could tell her himself.

My mom tells me that she loves it when Nic and I come home because all my siblings make sure to come over. One night the kids were in the front room playing a game and I asked my mom if her and dad wanted to come play. She said no, "I'm just enjoying hearing you guys laugh in the other room."

We took our Wii down and it was a HUGE hit! The first night we rocked out to Rock Band. My mom rocked out until 11:30 pm (waaay past her bedtime) and us kids stayed up until about 2 AM playing. It was fun. A couple of days later we bought Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 and that game NEVER went off. Our last night there Jacob wanted to have a championship match! Jacob's girlfriend Summer is usually pretty quiet, but when were were playing-I never heard her talk so much. I lot of smack talk too! If you haven't played this game, I suggest you do. Some of the concepts are gross (a burping contest where you try to destroy the city) but it's so much fun.

Christmas Eve we made tamales (with A Christmas Story playing in the back ground) and everyone helped this year. My mom wasn't used to having so many hands helped she would have to tell us to take a break. She still refused to let me help roll, even though I've made tamales several times on my own. Maybe in two years I'll be grown up enough to help. Oh! And to those of you that called me a tamale Nazi last year, I'm not nearly as bad as my mama. Trust me.

This year I must have been a very good girl because I got what I wanted for Christmas. A wok and a sewing machine. Well, technically I got a traveling case for my sewing machine and the machine its self will be here on Monday. When Nic put my present under the tree, I (thought I ) knew what it was, but he refused to let me hold it. Christmas morning I opened it and I was a little confused. Nic got a laugh out of my confusion. I also got two movies that I absolutely LOVE. The first one was from my brother Ricky-The Last Dragon. It is totally cheesy but it's so good. And Nic bought me Santa Claus the Movie. To me, this movie is the only Christmas movie that captures the magicalness (is that a word) of Christmas. I LOVED this movie growing up. Nic and I bought it a couple of years ago but we lost it. So I was REALLY excited when I got it this year. If you haven't seen this movie, you need to. It's great. The best Christmas present given Christmas Day? Ricky have Jacob a pair of Transformers underwear. I knew what it was before he opened it and had to do my best not to laugh.

Christmas night we went to go see Sherlock Holmes. It was good, but not the best movie I've seen. It's just nice to see that Robert Downey, JR turned his life of self-destruction around and is now successful. After the movie, everyone came back to my parents so we could play Cranium (my niece Brandie's request). My team totally dominated and we won.