It felt very weird having the day off today. No opening up the club at 2pm, no training and no wondering if today's work training clothes are fully dried or am I going to have to tough it out like the day before. It was definitely strange feeling, not having to work and feeling like everyone else did. Them running to and fro, speeding through the street lights to get from place A to place B, and Snickers and I just taking our sweet time and with no real destination in mind.
We took today off on account that our club hours are from 2pm to midnight and I didn't want to ring in Christmas in sweats and in a cold club working, despite the fact that yes I know it's our club. I wanted to celebrate Christmas Eve with a bit of tradition -- a nice dinner out, followed by a candlelit Christmas Eve church service.
We got the nice dinner out down pack. Being clearly lovers of food, we know lots of amazing restaurants so it was just a matter of picking from among them. We picked out this particular place that excels in shaved meat and it was awesome. Score on narrowing it down to this place!
As for the candlelit Christmas Eve church service, big flop with that. Wow's church wasn't having a Christmas Eve service as we had hoped it would and so I decided to go to a recommended church service by someone I hadn't ever met but had simply passed messages on Facebook regarding such service. I was told it was a larger church, with an attendance of about 1,500, but what they failed to tell me was about 70% of their attendance were kids tonight. We walked in and our eyes were instantly bombarded with the sights and sounds of mini ankle biters. Having stopped by Mama Kim's house in between dinner and the service with the 2 two year olds ruling the house and Mama Kim giving me her "why don't you have a baby?" look, we had already had quite our filling of kid activity for the day. I felt bad just getting up and leaving but I wasn't going to spend my Christmas Eve like this. Sorry to the guy who recommended this church to me. I appreciated the recommendation but I don't do kids in such a crazy quantity!
I left the church totally disappointed and wishing nothing more than to hop on a plane so that I could make it on time for the candlelit service at my parents' church. Snickers sensed my disappointment and so he rushed me to the other side of the city as fast as the traffic would allow him to do so. A couple of years back we went to a service at the church beside my old apartment, Sambu, and it was absolutely amazing. It was a smaller church and I remember when they asked for everyone who had helped out or participated in the show to come up for a picture, Snickers and I were basically the only ones not in the shot. They handed out little pouches of candy and tangerines just like my church back in Canada and then many people came to wish us a Merry Christmas. It was a very warm service and it felt just like how a Christmas Eve service should. Tonight however, when we arrived at the church, there was no service waiting for us. This Christmas Eve there was no fuzzy-feeling Christmas Eve service and I felt sad because of it.
Snickers tried to cheer me up by taking me out to one of our favourite coffee shops where he ordered us hot chocolate and a brownie with ice cream on top. I can't remember the last time I drank hot chocolate or ate a brownie for that matter but I had noted to Snickers that always after the Christmas Eve service in Canada, my parents and I would go home and enjoy hot chocolate and homemade cookies made by mom and us kids. The coffee shop didn't have any legit cookies that were worthy of me indulging in so hence the brownie that was ordered.
I know I can never recreate the Christmas Eves of past, the Christmas Eves I shared with my family in Canada, but I am trying my best to make holiday traditions with Snickers. Unlike my family that does a special dinner on Christmas, Snickers and I go all out on a Christmas Eve dinner, followed by a church service and now coffee and treats at a favourite coffee shop. I think I'll change this though for next year. Next year I'm going to definitely plan ahead and pick more carefully a church service to attend and I'm going to bake cookies and make my own hot chocolate. My mother used to cook tons of cookies every Christmas, so much cookies in fact that she had massive Tupperware containers specifically bought just to store her Christmas cookies in. Tonight I decided to cook a bit. I cooked up some brownies and boy were they delish. Snickers never eats the food I cook, bake or put together but tonight he couldn't get his dirty little hands out of my brownies; they were that delish.
We ended the evening by watching a movie. Our TV has VOD (video on demand) so I was able to pick from numerous Christmas flicks. Ended up picking A Christmas Story. Snickers thought it was a strange movie and was convinced that you had to be Polish to find it as funny as I did... hahaha. My all time favourite Christmas movie however is One Magic Christmas but our VOD didn't have it. I love, love, LOVE that movie.
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