Rinsefirst

I think Christmas is starting to take on new meaning now that I have my own family. It’s just different… Obviously I don’t have any kids… but that doesn’t seem to be taking anything away, at least from the start of my holiday season.

Yes, I’ve started, as has Amber. We went out and bought or first *fake* tree on thursday, and I set it up today… We don’t have to many ornaments, but those we do all have meaning. I put the first wave up today, and our Star Trek infested tree is now up. Pictures below.

Just wait til you see the next phase of Justin’s and Amber’s christmas tree… It’s going to rock :-).

So here it is everyone… Justin’s last post on Christmas 2007.

What have we learned in this process? I can think of a few things, that I think might be worth sharing here:

• 1 or 2 blog posts barely do justice to all the going’s on of this special time of year
• Themed blog posts seem to provide continuity to the site (at least to me)
• Justin had a great Christmas (in both a family and friend sense, a giving sense, and a receiving sense)
• That Justin really can generate 31 straight days of posts on a single topic.

Did you learn anything in this process of Justin’s? Anything you want to share about this process? If yes, post in the comments what you would like to share about this process. Otherwise, I believe I might just be staring yet another themed set of posts in February. Perhaps on love (haha yeah right! What in the world could I possibly write about for that)

I thought as we approached the end of this campaign, that I should make one more post with photos. These are from the last Christmas Party of the year. The last party we had took play on January 4th in the evening. It’s a party we have every year with friends from the old neighborhood. This year, Marty, Leslie, and David couldn’t join us, but we managed to all have fun without them. It’s amazing how old we have all gotten. I remember thinking at the party that most of us now are starting major careers, moving out permanently… Where as in my mind, it feels just like yesterday that we were playing Sim City on the Super NES.Without any further ado about this years party (which contained even more Guitar Hero 3), here are the photos:

Since I ran basically an entire month of things I got for Christmas, I felt I should post the things I didn’t get for Christmas… This is not a post of me thinking “I should have gotten that”. Quite the opposite… I must admit I was insanely surprised to NOT get a lot of these things… namely because I have gotten them every year in the past… And to be 100% honest, I’m very glad I didn’t get them… So here were the big surprises this year:

• Gift Cards - I got very few gift cards. Normally I rack up a significant amount towards things like Bestbuy. But this year, I managed to only get 3 gift cards. 1 For Kohls from Ashley Radabaugh (she must think I need some ;-)), 1 for subway, and 1 for Chili’s. Needless to say, this was great… The one thing I dislike getting for Christmas is giftcards because well… It’s just so impersonal. There are some situations where I think it’s required (like if your going to buy someone food, or if you know they are saving up for something way outside your price range), but really I think a lot of people buy them as short cuts (and ask for them as short cuts as well).

  So next year, I’m going to again make as detailed a list of possible of things I want for Christmas (big and small), and try to limit my exposure to the overdone gifts that are gift cards.

• Nintendo Games - Normally every year I rack up close to 50 additional Nintendo games to add to my collection… This year: I got 1. Now given that 1 was a big one… It still rather comes as a shock. I attribute this change to two things. 1) The difficulty level has gone up rather steep this year in being able to find both games I do not own, as well as a place to buy them, and 2) I think the people that normally get me used video games realized I had things on my list that were 1000 times more useful in my everyday life and instead went that route (probably a good thing). Still it came as quite a shock.
• The Adobe Cs3 Master Collection - You laugh at this one if you know the price. Not only did I not expect to get this for Christmas… I actually put it on my list as a way to remind me that I want to spend some of JR’s money in the near future on upgrading to CS3 (unless CS4 is coming out in the next few months). In any case, this one wasn’t surprising at all… It was more surprising that I even put it on my list.
• And just for completeness - 2 Super Nintendo Controllers - I put a request for 2 ORIGINAL Super Nintendo controllers on my list. Like the Nintendo games above, I believe they have become harder and harder to find (especially in original form). In any case, this was the only other item on my list that I did not get.

So all in all, Justin has a GREAT Christmas… And with only 2 more posts left in January… I’m just about done writing about it.

This is my Christmas post disclaimer…  (And look at that, it counts as part of my Christmas post messages).

I wanted everyone to know that I slightly cheated with my Christmas post messages. See, as I pointed out 1 month ago today, I managed to find a way to remove a certain event of my life off the calendar. That event was known as my birthday.

It was really rather easy… All it took was the following:

• A Christmas party in the morning (8:00am to about 1:00pm)
• A Highschool reunion in the afternoon (2:00pm to about 5:00pm)
• and a Company Christmas party in the evening (7:00pm to about 11:00pm)
• And to fill in the gaps: my cousins arrived in town.

That said, a lot of the gifts that I am passing off as Christmas gifts were actually birthday gifts as well. In fact, I’m not sure I can separate in my mind ANY birthday gifts this year (other than some cards with money in them).

So although I must admit this was probably my best Christmas ever (which made up for what I felt was a rather dissappointing Christmas last year), you must also realize it was probably my best birthday ever (since the two events have forever been linked).

I also should mention, just to be a complete as possible… I also believe many people see this as Justin’s “last” Christmas with the family (and as a “kid”). Something about the fact that I am getting married in 7 months.

May my many blessings this year find a way to bless you as well this year… And may you continued to be as blessed as I have been for years to come.

Can you tell as I am getting towards then end of this month long campaign that I am getting dangerously low on things to talk about as far as my Christmas is concerned? In any case…

From Amber’s mother, I got a camera battery for my new camera:

Now many of you are probably thinking… That’s such a rather pointless thing to post about… I mean, really? What’s next Justin? Are you going to be posting about the memory card accessory you got as well?

Well before you go on that very rant thinking that Rinsefirst has lost all hope… There is a story behind this gift as well that makes it worth sharing.

Because of the weird calendar this year, my many Christmas parties were spread out over the course of 2 weeks. Amber’s immediate family came first (22nd), followed by Nebraska Christmas (23rd and 24th), then my immediate family on the 28th, followed by my mom’s side on the 29th, and Amber’s mom’s side the 30th.

What’s makes this gift amazing in so many ways is that I got my camera on the 28th from my parents (see my last post). I got the battery 2 days later on the 30th from Amber’s mom. Amber’s mom did not know I would be getting a camera for Christmas, and yes, she had slightly procrastinated my Christmas shopping. But thanks to Amber’s wonderful ability to relay messages about my mood at any given moment, she managed to tell her mom exactly what I wanted most after the 28th… Something I couldn’t even have possibly put on my list.

That said I thought it was one of the best efforts of the year in trying to make my Christmas special… And for that, I am very thankful.