A Little Shopping And Holiday Movie Week.

Well, apparently now that I'm a parent, I have officially joined the ranks of those who go Christmas shopping in the last few days before Christmas. Admittedly, we've been hampered a bit by the rain and snow of recent weeks, and as much as biking to town in the cold is unappealing, it's worse in rain and/or snow. As it was this morning, there were patches of ice, but little enough traffic that we could avoid it fairly easily. Speaking of traffic, because the sidewalks were icier than the road, we went the whole way on the road. Usually it's a combination of both. I have to be honest. I don't like roundabouts when riding in a car. I really don't like them riding on A BIKE!

They are evil and confusing and... anyway that's not the subject of this particular post, so I'm letting it go. Deep breath... move on...

We rode into town early, arriving right about 9am, before the crowds got there. Now, not only were we doing our Christmas shopping three days before The Day. We didn't really know what we were getting. We had some ideas, but did not know where or exactly what... We had success at almost every place we went. We also scouted out some really nice hiking boots for our trip to Sweden in February. They've got a great sale going on right now, that they think will last through New Years, so we'll probably go back next week and get something. I only have the one pair of shoes here now (gave my spare pair of sneakers to Cale because he kept wearing through the ones we'd get him within days or weeks). And now my one pair are wearing out and have started giving me blisters and arch pain. I am really looking forward to these hiking boots. I'd just worn out my favorite pair back home and threw them away before the move. With shopping success, we had a quick lunch at Burger King (of course!) and headed home. I made the kids stay out of the dining room and wrapped everything up. I now understand why my mother started using gift bags with us all those years ago. Presents wrapped, everything put away. And now I'm sitting here, and hour or so later still shivering. The cold was okay while I was out in it, wearing a coat, hat and gloves. But now it's still in me, and I think I need to put on some more layers. Or take a hot bath.

But that will have to wait because today is day two of our Holiday Movie Week. Here is our plan:

There have been quite a few adjustments to it over the last 24 hours, and a few things have been taken off. It's not just classic American holiday shows, it's my favorites. The ones that I watch every year. I want to share these with my new family, who has never seen any of them (well, Nid's seen a couple). Yesterday's movie went over very well, and we'll be starting todays shortly. And last night Nid and I watched the less kid-friendly Christmas movie Die Hard!

Oh, and I nearly forgot! We missed our package delivery today. It left NJ on the 13th. It got scanned late yesterday somewhere in the UK. We thought it might get delivered  today, so we made sure to get back from town in a timely manner. We walked in the door and the children said there was a knock at the door and they left a notice. Of course they did! But then they said... about two minutes ago. Really? Just our luck. But it turns out we are lucky, because the call tag says they are dropping it at the same post office that they left the last one. It is closer than the main package delivery place, and it says we can pick it up tomorrow. We need to go to the PO anyway to get more gas and electric, so it all worked out.