Christmas is Awesome

It's been a fabulous December.  The Christmas season gets super crazy with work parties and church parties and family parties and endless other festivities.  Of course, I love all of it, so I'm not complaining.  Mostly, I'm just trying to sell you on my excuses for not having written in a long time.

I love everything about Christmas.  There are too many awesome things to talk about all of them.  But, I'll just share a few of my favorites.

It all starts the day after Thanksgiving.  Most of the world loses anything that even resembles sanity.  They crowd into stores, claw each other's faces off and sometimes they save a few dollars.  I, on the other hand, do all of my shopping online.  That means I get to spend time with my good friend, the internet.  I also like to brag to others about how I got it all done in a few hours online, this gives me the satisfaction of being smug and superior.  Who doesn't enjoy that?

After waiting a few days, the packages begin to arrive.  Boxes and boxes of joy come to my house.  I love to get it all under the tree as fast as possible.

There is an important reason that the presents need to get under the tree quickly.  Once they are under the tree, it is important to feel them, shake them, weigh them and do whatever else is necessary to study them and speculate what might be inside.  (But opening them is strictly forbidden.  Don't break the rules, you cheater.)

This game is probably my favorite part about Christmas.  But I learned the hard way a few years ago that when I win the game by properly guessing my gifts, it makes my wife sad.  So, I keep my guesses to myself, and then I can just keep score in my head when I open them.

Then, of course comes Christmas morning.  I get super excited, both to open presents and to watch other people open their presents.  It's kind of the best thing ever.  One important part of the present opening process is that Robyn takes the bows off of the presents and puts them in her hair.

This year, my in-laws surprised me with a pretty awesome present that I didn't even ask for:

I also surprised Robyn by giving her her childhood in a DVD:

There are always good times while opening presents.  Sometimes it's important to build a present fort on top of my sister.

All in all, I love Christmas.  I love family.  I love presents.  I love pie.  We were even blessed with a white Christmas this year.  What more could a guy ask for?

My Hobbit Obsession

Today is an important day in history.  Today is the day that I see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey for the first time.  (I know it comes out tomorrow, but that's for normal people.)

A month or so ago, when it was announced that Disney had purchased the rights to Star Wars, and they were making 3 more movies, naturally I shouted for joy.  Robyn asked me if that meant that I would be obsessing about Star Wars for the next few years.  I assured her that I was an equal opportunity obsesser and that I would not neglect obsessing about The Hobbit.

So, today, I am keeping that promise.  I promise to think about nothing but The Hobbit until the movie is over.  I will also continue obsessing about the next 2 movies until I have seen all 3.

Also, I would like to write my review of the movie before I see it.

I loved it.  It was the best 3 hours of my life.

The End.

P.S. My favorite character is Smaug.  But I don't think he'll be in this movie, since  the second one is the Desolation of Smaug.

The saga of the Novembeard

At the beginning of last month, I told you about the Novembald to Novembeard project.  In that post, I promised I would update you, so you could see how the beard went.

Well, they say a picture is worth 1,000 words.  What I have for you is a time lapse video that contains 30 pictures chronicling the growth of my beard throughout the month.  That means this video is worth 30,000 words.  That's like reading half a novel.  You should be proud of yourself, you're such a good little reader.

 Also, I have 2,000 more words for you.  When I shaved the beard I felt it was important to have some fun stages on the way.  I spent the entire day as an Amish person.

It was quite amusing.  We went to the store and the checkout girl was giving me a funny look, trying to figure out if I was for real.  So, naturally, I said, "I'm really excited about this canned food we're buying.  I've never had canned food before, what with being Amish and all."

That's when Robyn got really embarrassed and told the girl I wasn't really Amish.  Lame.

Then that evening I shaved it just a little more.

I call this one, "Brother Brigham".

But now I'm all shaved and I'm just regular.  I hope you enjoyed my 32,000+ words of goodness.