Today Is Christmas

Today is Christmas and it was spent with my family, eating delicious food and being the generally dysfunctional bunch we always are. One thing you'll learn about me is that I'm horrible at uploading pictures in a timely manner so I always end up making posts about things that have happened days before because I finally have the pictures up. Which is why, today, I'll mostly be talking about what happened the day before Christmas Eve instead of this wonderful day itself. Which is sad because Christmas really is a beautiful time of year. As everyone in my family changes and gets older, the dynamics of our Christmas change but the love is always there and for that, I am grateful.

Another thing I'm grateful for is the fact that my beloved J gets home tomorrow! He's been stranded in London and even though he's only lay-overing in my town for about an hour, he'll be at his home home and I'll be able to see him for ten days :] Just knowing that he's on my side of the Atlantic is going to relieve some stress, I feel. Having a boyfriend 5000 miles away really is a stressful situation. Anyway, here he is:

He really is a wondeful boyfriend and altogether is the second thing I am grateful for.

The third is for these people:

Since I was in London for the past three months, I hadn't had the chance to see any of my good friends from home and even though I still have yet to see any of them, I'm thankfully for the four I did get a chance to hang out with a few days ago. From left to right: K, my roommate who I'll soon be seeing on a daily basis. M, who goes to school a few hours away from me and is really bad about texting back, T, my best friend who has stood by my craziest moments but who is so busy during the semester that she hardly has time to sleep much less hang out and finally, C, who shipped off to the Navy a few years ago and, besides for a few days she takes as leave, doesn't know when she'll be back. Somehow, some way, we were all able to get together and hang out. Walk to the mall like we did before we could drive, try on ridiculous outfits and catch each other up on our craziest stories. For a while, our group of friends was absolutely crazy and we fought every other day. A manifestation of our jealousy and insecurity. We've finally gotten a little better about that and have learned to be thankful for the times we do get to be together.

Now my family's baking a pie [frozen of course, we don't do 'from scratch' around here] and are having problems working the new Blu-Ray player so I think I'm going to go see what's up. J's flight leaves at 5 am CST and he should be back by four! AND AND AND I get to see D, the boy who I had the most inexplicable relationship with but have somehow managed to be friends with, and the wonderful K. More on that later of course but for now, Merry Christmas. It's amazing that a day like this can exist; to just bask in the blessing of life and put everything else aside for a whole twenty-four hours.