My how the Christmas season comes

Here's a little something Dad sent me, isn't it hilarious? I certainly think so. Way to go Dad! In case you couldn't open the file to my Christmas list, here it is:

Grant's Christmas List
Josh Groban's Noel
The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse
J.R.R Tolkien's Stories and Poems
Mission Impossible 1-3
books from "The Song of Ice and Fire" series by George R.R Martin (I don't have any so I'd appreciate you guys going in order)
Tales of Symphonia for Gamecube
The Song of Roland
A&W Root Beer
any book about swords
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
books about samurai or a book of Japanese legends
Celtic Woman CD's
Trans-Siberian Orchestra CD's
Japanese grammar books/dictionaries etc.
gift cards to Borders, Target, Barnes and Nobles, etc.
Daniel Rodriguez CD's
The Dark Knight
Cookbooks with delicious recipes (Books with pizza recipes would be highly appreciated)
iTunes gift cards
Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii
Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn for the Wii
CD's with Latin music: preferably Christmas music or another idea is a CD with Gregorian chants
The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack
The Two Towers soundtrack
The Silmarillion by J.R.R Tolkien
Bill O'Reilly's Culture Warrior
The No Spin Zone by Bill O'Reilly
What's So Great About America by Dinesh D'Souza
The Garden: An Allegorical Oratorio by Michael McLean

It's quite a bit but it should give you some good options since some of the things listed are rather broad.

You know sometimes I feel pretty crazy about how some of the most absurd things that relate to life become connected to politics: i.e. People who want to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18 and those who want to change the Star Spangled Banner from what it is right now to songs like "Don't Stop Believing" from an artist/artist group known as Journey and "Free Bird" from Lynard Skynard. I found these on Facebook. Maybe the changing of the Star Spangled Banner thing was just a joke, but there is always that chance that it isn't a joke, and I do think that these people are serious. That's scary! These types of people will tear society apart, and change everything on a whim! I'm so glad that I'm a conservative.

http://www.dailygut.com/index.php?i=3972

It's been weeks since I've last written. I don't know when I last started writing this post but since then I've had two Christmas concerts plus one assembly, one birthday party to celebrate (not mine of course, I meant Becca's), one Christmas Eve dinner, a whole lot of presents and half of my break over.

I'll start with the Christmas concert for school. It turned out to be a big success! The hat received a lot of compliments and praise, especially during the school assembly. What made this Christmas concert special, besides the fact that it was my last one, was that Ryan and Becca showed up and I got to finish the concert with him. That was really awesome! And it will go down in my memory here, on this blog, this online journal of mine.

Right after I had the Christmas concert for my school I had another Christmas concert. This time though it was with the Symphony Candlelight choir. We (meaning the men's choir) got to sing in the St. Stanislaus church, which was like a mini-cathedral! I mean seriously it was big and it had some good acoustics. There were only three parts about the concert that I enjoyed:

1. The entire concert was an hour long only.
2. When we (the men's choir) were done singing our last song we got to get out early, and
   
3. I'll never have to do this again.

For those who are wondering why this is so bad here are my reasons: First, Ms. Vlach made this mandatory. Second, we spent about four hours walking in circles, literally. Third, I had my hopes about actually being fed lunch got crushed when "lunch" turned out to be three pieces of pizza. Three pieces of pizza is almost as bad as having no pizza because it doesn't fill you up and you end up wanting more. Still, it's better than nothing.

That night after the concert I went over to Ryan and Becca's house and celebrated Becca's birthday. Dad and Penny were there, Molly, Uncle Murray and Aunt Laurie were there, Horacio (is that how you spell his name Ryan?) and his family were there, Grandma Barbara was there, Aunt Carrie was there ad some other people that know Ryan and Becca were there too. I was glad that I was there, although I was not glad that my Dad tried to strike a match with my face (the big ugly jerk!).

So skipping along now, as I am writing this, one week of my Christmas break is over. I mentioned Christmas Eve dinner. Well it was at my Mom's house and there was an awful lot of food! It was delicious and a major kudos go to Mom for putting it on. Of course one thing I like about giant holiday dinners is that you get some sweet leftovers to eat! Mom made Grandma mad somehow so she (Grandma) didn't bother to so show up. Once again, there was a lot of good food that we still have at our house, even now.

Now to Christmas. Christmas started with me and Garit opening our presents and our stockings. Then it progressed to a splendid breakfast put on by our dear sweet mother and then we went to Atwater. Most of my presents this year came in the form of gift cards and money. Don't get me wrong, I'm very, very, very grateful that I got them. I got to see my Patterson cousins, which I haven't seen in a long, long time. I noticed that Christmas dinner wasn't as good as Thanksgiving dinner, although it was still pretty darn good. Before I got to leave I got beat pretty badly by Garit at Lord of the Rings Risk and I got to play on the Wii that had been brought over by the Patterson's.

Last Wednesday Mom and I picked Garit up. Having him over has been my favorite part of the Christmas season so far. He beat three times in Lord of the Rings Risk but I got better each and every time. Garit and I actually got to finish the third game, which is something that doesn't happen often considering how long the game takes. Playing Risk with Garit is so stinking awesome, I really don't care as much about winning and losing (although I still care and the two of us are pretty competitive at this game). The Risk game that I'm talking about was played by us just yesterday (on Saturday) and we started it at about 9:00 and we didn't finish it until about 3:00. On that same day Dad took us out to pizza and Garit's friend, Isaac, cam along too. The pizza was so good and we ate at the new X-treme Pizza, wherever in Modesto that is.
After Dad took us out we played two rounds of Apples to Apples in the which Garit won the first round and Mom won the second.

Speaking of Garit and Mom, I really miss them right now. As I'm writing this I am at Dad's house where I'll be spending the rest of the last week of my Christmas vacation and I'm already not looking forward to it. Dad whined about being broke after we dropped off Garit which probably means that he is going to be mainly working and not taking time to do things with me, so I'll be shut in his house for about a week. Also, I'll be doing a lot of scouts, which has never been all that enjoyable. I've been motivated to get my merit badges over with, and I'm so close now too! I miss everybody in my family right now except Dad. I haven't even been separated from Mom for all that long and I'm already dying to go back to her. We just barely dropped Garit off and I'm already missing him like crazy. It's been about two weeks and I've barely spoken to Ryan too. Gosh I love you guys. I want you all to know that too! I think about you guys all the time, and I never can seem to get enough of you!

Even though I have to let Garit go back to the snow I am grateful for the time I had with him. Even though I started acting like a jerk to Mom towards the end of last week I truly and deeply love and care about her. I wish I could Grandma Barbara's face again, maybe even play a card game with her! Man, I'd give anything to talk to Ryan and Becca too!