I had a really good Christmas. There was much togetherness, laughter, eating, UNO and Firefly. I also got a really good haul.

The big present this year: a digital camera. Now I have no more excuses, and I'm so excited to start using it. It's a Canon PowerShot SD 200 Digital Elph. It is a great little camera, so far. It's about the size of a deck of playing cards, has a two-inch display, 3.2 MPs, and did I mention it was small? You know how I love small things. Look for more pictures in this space in the future.

From Calvin: one of those game sets that has ten classic games you can play, like chess and checkers and Chinese checkers and backgammon and cribbage. He picked it out himself. Cassie said he wanted to play checkers with me, but we ended up trying to play chess. I warned him it was hard, but he wanted to try. He did pretty good, too. Scratch that, he played for longer than anyone expected. I tried to tell him what his options were, and he kept asking, "Can I move this one?" He liked to move the pawns. It was so cute. He enjoyed his walkie-talkies, too. He used them to call Lew names from the next room.

From Ken: a dream journal and a dream interpretation book. A hint to stop talking about my dreams in my blog? Just teasing. I'm testing it out, though things like a Die Hard-style showdown at a mall kind of tests the extent of the book.

From my sister and brother-in-law: two framed pictures of us on the trip up there, one an 8x10 of the three of us at the Bridal Veil waterfall and two 4x6s of Exit Glacier and Resurrection Bay. I'll have to figure out where I want to hang them now, probably in the living room. Em also got me a Jem t-shirt which says "Truly Outrageous!" on the back. Awesome. I also got a bracelet with an Emerson quote on it.

From Lew: a Serenity package including the movie, the soundtrack to the movie, and the Finding Serenity book.

Also from my parents (besides the camera): a shirt and sweater set, lots of Victoria's Secret underwear (yay! I can throw some old ones away!), socks, various candies, eyeshadow, the complete set of the Little House books, the coat Lew went back for - more on that later, and...drumroll, please...one vintage Flash 'n Sizzle Jem/Jerrica doll, still in the box. Mom had bought two of them - Em got Glitter 'n Gold Jem/Jerrica - years and years ago, and forgot to give them to us. She thought that it was about time we had them. Isn't that so cool? Never been opened. I felt like I was ten again.

So, this coat...I opened Lew's present and was very suprised to see the Serenity stuff. Very happy to see it, but confused about the coat. So I told him the story about seeing his car, and he started laughing and told me he went back to get the cashier's phone number since she had hit on him while we were buying Emily's gift. I laughed and told him that was a much better story than the one I had posted on my blog. After a couple of hours, I finally got to my last present, from Mom and Dad, and opened the jacket. That was a suprise. Emily had told them I knew about the coat, and they worked the trade and the cover story for me. They're all so devious.

And we were all together again, which was was the best present of all. It was a very good Christmas.