A Christmas update from The 'Sunshine' state

Yep, it's overcast today. Early morning was sunny, but not for the past 7 hours or so. It's just as well, I had some stuff to do.

Yesterday was Christmas (you probably knew that) and we (my sister & her husband, my nephew and I) exchanged XMas gifts and then we shared a Christmas meal that I prepared.

First the bad news. My 4 year old nephew talks about dinosaurs a lot. My sister told me that he is really fascinated by them and likes them a lot. So, guess what I got him for XMas. Well, just in case you haven't guessed, I got him a big dinosaur - T-Rex to be exact. It stands almost 3 foot tall and when you press one of the bumps on his tail, he moves and lets out a roar. I figured he would absolutely love it... Wrong ! He's terrified of it. He was even crying that he didn't want to take it home with him. So, after his father teased him about it, I reassured him that it was a friendly dinosaur, but he didn't have to take him home. Rather, he would wait here for whenever he wanted to come back and play with him. I may never see the kid again. Seriously, perhaps by next XMas he may better appreciate T-Rex.

The good news is, that he loved his other gifts from me; coloring books, a Dr. Suess book, and the story of Christmas book and a Spiderman car. I'm not sure I did as well with my sister's gifts. I gave her a DVD (romantic comedy), a mystery book, a contraption to make toast while camping (they like to camp) and a personal blender that makes smoothies. The bowl of that blender is sort of like a flask, that fits in the car cupholder. My brother-in-law liked his gifts; a couple items to help repair computers, a DVD, 2 scifi books, decorative switch plates for their downstairs bathroom and a stainless steel 'pitchfork' for roasting hot dogs while camping. My nephew gave me a set of tennis balls and the best, most appropriate gift they gave me was a National Audubon field guide to birds. Thus, I guess, that I no longer have a legitimate excuse for not knowing the type of birds I photograph. They also gave me some yummy blackberry herbal tea. I'm having some now.

After the gift exchange, I put the finishing touches on the Christmas Dinner. I baked a turkey, made homemade gravy, steamed corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, salad and whole berry cranberry sauce. For dessert they brought an apple pie, which was then topped with 3 different Bryers ice cream (strawberry cheesecake, black cherry & chocolate chocolate chip). I also made a fresh tropical fruit salad (pineapple, mango, papaya,strawberry, banana),
but we never even got to it, as we were so stuffed. Indeed, after dinner my sister fell asleep on the couch for about an hour while we watched a 'Transformers' DVD. I guess between the meal, all the gift wrapping and chasing after my nephew, she was spent.

Oh, by the way, if you haven't seen the 'Transformers' movie, you aren't missing much, except for lots of shots of Megan Fox running.




Well, at least those were my favorite scenes and there were plenty of them. While the movie had very good special effects (and did I mention Megan Fox ? :), the plot was really dumb. I didn't even want to waste a movie review blog on it. It wasn't worth it. I mentioned to my nephew's parents that this movie was really inappropriate for my nephew. It had some light s*xual scenes (including a hot cyborg gal) and lots of violence. They told me that they actually show the movie at my nephew's pre-school. No wonder these kids today are screwed up ! To me the amazing part is that my nephew was into it and not frightened at all. Yet, a toy dinosaur terrified him ??? I guess kids realize that movies are not real ?

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