We had a rather non-traditional but nice Christmas around the Verber household this year.
Let’s start off by saying I am notoriously not patient about gifts… giving or receiving. Knowing this I had one of Jason’s bigger gifts sent to a friends house then I immediately wrapped it after I got it so I wouldn’t be tempted to give it to Jason early…. Jason also knowing this planned a gift for me that he gave to me early… I came home from a late night crop in the Quad Cities one night to find our house decorated with lights. I always admire decorated houses but Jason never seemed too interested, so it was a really special surprise that he took the time to go buy and put up lights on our house!
We also knew before Christmas that we might be having a solo Christmas… My parents are in Florida, Jason’s brother just moved to Texas… Our car doesn’t have many long journeys left in it… so a WI trip seemed like a waste, so we started looking forward to a low key Christmas at home… In fact by the 20th we still didn’t have the tree up. Well it turned out that despite the threat of bad weather Jason’s mom would be able to join us, that was a nice surprise, and she made it down from WI on the 23rd.
My impatience with gift giving/receiving was really getting to me by the 23rd or sooner… So I pulled out the technicality that after the Christmas Vigil at church it is for all intents and purposes Christmas…. Even if we went to the earliest (5pm) service offered… So after Jason and I went to church on Christmas Eve we came home and had dinner, then drove around to see some Christmas lights, then came home to open presents.
Now the fun begins! We decided to try to Skype with Aaron, Jason’s brother, so he could open presents with us and vice versa… So after the set up, which took way too long in my opinion we were set to go… Aaron sat on a chair across the room for us, which is ironic since Aaron doesn’t even have a chair in his new apartment yet… We took turns opening presents and had a great time.
So the loot: I got my christmas lights/decorations, awesome GPS for geocaching, some cash, some bread mixes, pancake mixes, Walden Farms products
Jason got: A Kindle, fog free shower mirror, a book, bread mixes, Walden Farm’s products, pancake mixes, Kindle reading stand, cash
Christmas Day was pretty low key, Jason made a turducken (Turkey, stuffed with duck, stuffed with chicken) since we had been interested in it since we heard about it on the food network one day… and we enjoyed rolls from Texas Roadhouse… It can’t get much better than that! 
