You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch

This is the first day I've gotten online in several days! Ah the holiday season! On Christmas Eve my mom, Lex and I went into town for some last things we needed. We stopped at Food Max and Walmart and the Dollar Store. Traffic was amazingly not bad at all! We picked up the things we needed taking a few hours. By the time we were finished we got a call from grandma saying they were already eating pizza without us at her house! I was starving and so as we walked through the Dollar Store, our last stop, I looked at nearly every food item lustfully and incessantly said "Oooohh!" or "Yum!", "I'm starving!" or "We should get that." It was rather pathetic dragging myself through the little place looking for paper plates and other last minute things. Mom and Lex thought it was pretty funny. "HALIE!" they finally announced, "NEVER shop hungry!!" Or with money in my wallet, I thought... But despite my likely exagerated hunger we laughed and had a good time as usual! So we finally made it to grandma's, great grandma and grandpa Coldenhoff were there, and great aunt and uncle Debbie and Crawford, as well as aunt Tina were over at grandma and grandpa Hunley's. Most of them had already eaten pizza but I think I ate like four pieces.... I ate a lot! They were big pieces. We just hung out for a few hours before heading home. I mostly sat in an old creaky rocking chair and wrote... The kids were promptly put to bed, but first we all opened a present early. As is custom we all got a pair of pajamas to wear that night and Lex and I stayed up with mom for the first time on Christmas night. I helped wrap more presents. The day before I'd spent all morning in there assisting her wrap presents - my legs had been so cramped and ouchhh! But I knew most of what the kids were getting before they got it. I wasn't allowed to wrap or see any of my own of course, but there is no way any one person could've wrapped all those! I must admit my wrapping skills are very bad! My perfectly meticulous sister Lexie, of course was a present wrapping prodigy while I struggled to get my ends to meet. I am not good at guesstimating paper size... Anyways when the presents were wrapped I arranged the presents around the tree. I took a picture with my cell phone - there were soo many! I guess that goes along with all the kids but it was truly amazing lol! All the variety in paper color and pattern and size, it took up quite a space, I'd try to give a rough estimate but as I've already established I'm rather bad at guesstimating sizes!! It took be quite awhile to get them all in and then I went to the kitchen to help mom. I made russian tea cakes and helped her make ginger snaps. Baking was fun, not at all like wrapping presents - you don't have to guess anything, you just put in the right amounts, follow the directions correctly and it's a black and white thing. Either you did it right and everything's perfect or you did it wrong and you FAIL! Pretty much the same with cooking. There are exact measures and easily followed recipes and read and follow the right way and you can't go wrong! It reminds me of life oddly. Have faith and believe God has a plan, the best plan, try your best and you really can't go wrong. Once the cookies were done we stuffed stockings. Lexie helped with this mainly and I just sat and joked and tried to fix one of Lexie's majorly failed Christmas projects. After that Lex was tired and went to bed but I stayed up with mom and helped her made chocolate covered pretzel sticks and clean up before I finally crashed. The next morning the kids were up at 4 AM. They kept coming into my room and being rowdy and loud and nervous until about 6 AM when they finally worked up the nerve to go wake up our parents. Then we all crawled out of our warm beds into the living room. Sam wouldn't quit jumping, he had a LOT of energy for someone who was up at 4 AM! We all sat on the floor and filled the living room floor and began opening. I got so many cool things! I got three Vampire Diaries books, a Vampire Diaries bag, a Grinch doll, an oil painting kit, a cookbook that was so cool, you do all the decorating and recipe adding yourself so it's almost like a scrapbook cookbook, lots of lotion (Ha ha mom, ha ha), and a tooth brush! Then we cleaned the place up a lot, listening to the radio, Kate and I jumped all around the living room singing the entire "His Favorite Christmas Story" song. Grandpa Butch, Grandma Kathy, Great Grandma Rose, Great Grandpa Al, Great Aunt Debbie, Great Uncle Crawford, and cousin Tina came over for breakfast. Quiche, sausage, croissants, etc. They had brought presents for us too, Aunt Debbie, Uncle Crawford and cousin Tina got me some makeup from Sephora, grandma and grandpa Hunley got me a gift card to Forever 21 and some soft peppermint sticks (she know those are my favorite Christmas candy!!) Every year I look forward to soft peppermint sticks, but this year I couldn't find them!! Grandma found them though! I went to my room after awhile, I was getting a headache. Blah I'm tired! I'll finish later! We had MORE relatives over later! Laterz!!