Christmas in June & Hello Summer

In honor of the Summer Solstice, I decided that it was time to celebrate Christmas again.

(NOTE: At this point, I advise you to start playing Christmas carols on your computer to make this experience more enjoyable.)

My family always has a Christmas party with my godparents, Howard & Jane.  For reasons unknown by anyone really, we had not yet found the opportunity to celebrate in the past 6 months.  I had made it the #1 bullet point on my To-Do list that we needed to schedule a time to honor Christmas sometime in June.  The solstice was a perfect excuse to celebrate!

When I got up the morning before the celebration, I yawned, rubbed my eyes and looked out at the perfectly gorgeous day.  What a wonderful day to have Christmas!  For breakfast I had the usual 2.5 bowls of cereal, and proceeded downtown to the Farmer's Market with my mom.  The Saturday's Farmer's Market is always a treat to go to, especially when you're hungry for endless fruit samples and honey sticks.  We quickly ran out of money as we found it necessary to buy every type of berry & flower in sight.  Life was good.

Our Christmas day got better when we stopped by the market to pick up some more food (Hobby #3 for me in life).  My mom asked me to go looking for some agave syrup; however I quickly got distracted by the cheese aisle.  "Hmmmm brie," I mused.  Twenty minutes later I found my mom, with goodies & wine underarm..and no agave syrup.  The wine I had picked up was the Coppola Claret from Napa Valley.  It was a wine I had been hoping to try for months... yes!  I will save more details on this particular wine for "Earthy Sustenance."

The day didn't stop becoming even more wonderful, especially when Hilary showed up at my house with her new car...an extremely shiny black Prius.  Marshy, my white Prius, hopes to soon become good friends with "Black Magic," although it may be a bit of struggle as Mashy is a bit socially dysfunctional.  Hilary and her new car took me down to the beach where we had plans to meet the rest of the crew.

Upon arriving, we were quickly invited to join a game of Bocce Ball.   Nico and I were assigned to the same team, which allowed us to kick some seriously Bocce butt.  Our opponents found themselves overcome by our talent, and it wasn't long before they had gone into the water to swim & surf.  If I may add as a side note, I'm not particularly a fan of the beach or beach water because it is either too cold or too hot.  But on Christmas, the water was just perfect.  The surf wasn't too big to make body surfing a hazard.  I even found the ambition to surf on Nico's new long board.  I hadn't had much surfing practice lately as my first surfboard had been stolen indirectly, and my second stolen directly out of my garage.  It was interesting to surf again...to say the least. 

After almost getting wiped out by a baby tidal wave, I headed back home to ready myself for the Christmas party.  My parents, Nico and I headed over to Jane & Howard's with presents underarm.  Upon arriving, we found their front door covered in Christmas decorations, most importantly a felt banner reading"Happy Christmas!"  Also present (no pun intended) was a massive wreath about 3 feet in diameter, covered in colorful ornaments.  All I could think at the moment was what their neighbors were thinking.

To make an extremely long and delightful evening short for the sake of space here, we had a very happy Christmas.  My parents received a present the size of a Smart Car with 17 bows attached to the top of it.  It was quite entertaining to watch them unwrap it after 7 glasses of wine each and whilst bickering about how they were going to fit such a large box in the car.

Lastly, I must note that we contributed handsomely to the Jane & Howard Cork Collection (J&HCC), which had only been begun the week prior. ;)