Christmas Eve, Eve

Guys, tomorrow is Christmas Eve! Can you believe it? It seems so soon, but then it always does. I think part of the reason though is that it seems like I just got here but I've been here for a week already and I've done a  lot in this week too.

Sunday I went to church at the family ward. It was good to go in a real church building again. At school since there are so many members around we attend church on campus in one of the buildings. We also do it backwards where Relief Society is first and Sacrament is last, so it was nice to get back to what I was used to. There was some meeting about the new lesson structure for Sunday School or something so most of the people that I would have known were at that and I was really tired which was kind of annoying but whatever.

After church we went to my aunt and uncle's house and talked with them for a while a wound up my cute litle cousins. My youngest cousin, Ariana, was about a 2 months old the last time I saw her. She's about 9 now so she'd grown a lot. Another one of my cousins, Sebastian, I think looks like a little like Grant when he was younger.

Monday wasn't particularly eventful. I slept in while everyone else went to school. Grant and Dad went to see The Hobbit so I took Brandi to Karate and she got us "lost," but aside from that I pretty much just read my book all day. It's a murder mystery, which I've never really read before but I wanted to give it a try. Well, I want to flip to the back and find out who did it so I guess that means that it's doing it's job.

Tuesday I accidentally went to a band concert. I thought that the yearly drama radio show was that night but it turns out that it wasn't. When we got to the school though there was a Christmas choir/band concert so my parents and I just stayed for that.

Wednesday I was going to go into school with my mom but she ended up not needing me, so I went to a few stores and got some stuff done and then later Brandi and I went up to the mall to buy some presents. When I was out I ran into Hillary and her mom and sister which was cool since I hadn't seen them in a while. Brandi and I also wandered into Toys R Us to see if Karoline was working that day but I'm sad to say that she wasn't. That evening we went back to the school for the real drama radio show, which was alright, and I got to talk to Katy and Anna.

Thursday I really just made candy all day. I did attempt to watch the Church's Christmas devotional that aired way back on the first, but I was interrupted by and urgent need to go to Taco Bell and get food. I still haven't see the darn thing. When it originally aired was when I was at Temple Square filling in for the missionaries. In fact that's why we were there, so that they could go see it. And I've just never sat down and watched it. Taco Bell reminds me though, Brandi still needs to make me sushi...

Friday was the "end of the world" and I had a bit of an adventure. I got up around 9:30, and the plan was to go to Scott's house at 11, but apparently in the confusion of everything (I told Hillary to make that plans but then she had a family crisis) he was never told of this. So I picked up Chelsea and Katy and we headed over to Scott's house to find that he was still asleep. The three of us decided to go to my house and Hillary and Scott eventually met us over there. So yeah, not actually that much of an adventure. We had a good time watching lame end of the world movies and being weird, and we even watched an episode or two of Fruits Basket, which is a show I haven't really seen since my freshman year of high school. We exchanged a few gifts as well and were glad I think that the world did not in fact end.

Saturday morning it was my parent's turn to clean the church building so we went and did that at 9. It really didn't take very long though, which was kind of surprising because I feel like cleaning the church always takes forever. Anyway, after that we went to the mall where we got pictures with Santa and picked up a few things. Then we headed into Seattle.

We had planned to go see the King Tut exhibit at the science center but it ended up being some ridiculous price so we ended up just looking around and going to a few shops and stuff, which was fun. While we were there we also had dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory where I also saw Ms. Armstrong, my old English teacher from my freshman year of high school. Thankfully she did not see me. Or if she did pretended that she didn't, which wouldn't have surprised me.

While I didn't particularly enjoy her class, I thought as a person she was fine, but for some weird reason she didn't like me at all. It's too bad that Hillary wasn't with us, then we could have gone up and said hi and maybe we could have recreated that "Why, hello...oh...." that greeted us every day of our freshman year. For some reason Ms. Armstrong was super fond of Hillary and so every day she would walk into class and get a super happy hello or good morning or whatever and then I would enter right behind her and get an "oh". Usually it was the end of the happy hello that was turning into an "oh, it's you again." You'd think that after a few weeks she'd realized that we entered class at the same time roughly and get used to it.

Anyway, I didn't talk to her or anything so no worries and moving on! After dinner we went to the Deseret bookstore. I've noticed that finding a Deseret store in Utah is kind of like finding a Starbucks in Washington, they're practically around every corner. And yet fining one is Washington is like finding a Starbucks in Utah, they're pretty much nowhere.

We then went to the Botanical Garden and then to another mall/ Snowflake Lane which was... well, somewhat lacking (Snowflake Lane I mean, The Botanical Gardens and even the mall were great). After the Snowflake Lane thing it was crazy crowded so we decided to walk around. We were going to go to the University bookstore but it was closed so I suggested that we go to this store we saw called World Mart instead.

It was kind of a cool place. They had different food and furniture and stuff from different parts of the world and my parents even found an airplane thing for our living room. We also got some peach flavored chocolate and some of those delicious shrimp flavored chips from Japan which if you haven't tried you need to like right now, because they are awesome. Once we'd found our treasures the crowd had dismissed so we headed back to the car and went home. End of adventure.

Wow, I just realized that I said that in that day we went to like five different malls but you know, that's kind of my parent's thing. Not going to malls so much per say but going to shops and browsing the general downtown area and going into stores and stuff. I remember as a little kid I used to think that it was pretty boring but a few years ago I stared to see why they like it, so I guess that just means that I'm getting old or something.

And so that brings us to today, Christmas eve, eve. I can't say that I really did a lot. I went to the single's ward and got to see some friend that I haven't seen in a while. It was good to see them but aside from that I really haven't done much. I had some burritos, which might not sound that great to you, but I haven't had burritos on Sunday in a while (ok, last week, but I mean aside from that) so I quite enjoyed it.

So yeah, that's what I've been up to. And a happy Christmas eve, eve to you all! Hard to believe that Christmas is right around the corner!