Merry Christmas to All

First and foremost, we want to wish everyone a very merry Christmas! We hope you are enjoying your holiday. We certainly have been enjoying ours. We've been able to spend a lot of time with both of our families and much fun has been had by all. Here are a few highlights from our Christmas Eve.

In the morning, we participated in a Christiansen Christmas tradition: Graham Carcker houses (Graham crackers are much more easy to work with than gingerbread). Here is our final product:




We spent a bit of time just getting the main structure up. Lisa did some great work in building it. After doing that and the roof, I think both of us weren't wanting to spend too much more time adding lavish decorations. I contributed the path and the gumdrop trees, while the snowman and wreath were Lisa's creations.

That evening we were part of a somewhat new tradition: acting out the Christmas story. I always get the part of Samuel the Lamanite (a prophet in the Book of Mormon). Here I am in character:



As most of you know, at the end of Samuel's prophesying, the people become very angry and cast stones and arrows at him. God protects Samuel and no one is able to hit him. We reenact this part, as the little kids are always eager to throw things at someone. Unfortunately for me, our reenactment does not include the inability of people hitting Samuel with stones and arrows. I did a pretty good job dodging them this year, but this part is never portrayed 100% accurately.

After some more Christmas activities, we headed over to Lisa's parents' house and participated in the Fisos' Christmas traditions. We got to eat some more delicious food, and talk more about the Christmas story. Fortunately, nothing was thrown at me there. They all then got to open a present of PJs and a book, a tradition Lisa and I will be carrying into our family. After all that, we watched Despicable Me. Lisa and I had seen it before, but still enjoyed watching it with the family.

After all these fun activities, it was time to head home and get to bed. It was a very good Christmas Eve, and the good times continued into Christmas. We have had a wonderful holiday season and hope you have as well.

What Dreams May Come

Friday night Lisa and I finally got around to seeing the movie Inception at the dollar theater. I loved it. It's one of the best movies I've seen in a long time, and now I need to watch it several more times to try to catch things I missed the first time. After watching it, I began to wonder what kind of dreams I would have as I slept that night. Well, I didn't really have any dreams specifically tied to the movie, but I did have a unique experience.

In my dream, I was doing something with my two brothers. I don't really remember all that was going on, but they were doing things I really didn't like. I was getting annoyed and asked them to stop. They would say stuff like they were done or whatever, and then go right back to doing it. It was making me very mad. My anger continued to build until I just blew up - I suddenly woke up, picked up my pillow, and very angrily launched it across the room. Not really being conscious yet, I laid back down and was going to continue my sleep. It wasn't until a few moments later that my brain processed everything that had just happened. I thought to myself, "Wait, what just happened there?" I had fun in the morning explaining to Lisa why there was a pillow in our closet.

This is all pretty humorous, but it wasn't the first time I've been driven to extreme anger by a sibling in a dream. A couple years ago, I had a dream where my brother was twisting my arm behind my back, and it hurt a lot. I was begging him to stop, but he just kept going. As my pain and anger reached its boiling point, I had no choice but to retaliate. I brought my other arm around to punch him, when I woke up and fiercely punched my bed 3 or 4 times. As with my experience this week, it took a while for me to figure out what was going on. I was still steaming mad and it took me a few minutes to cool down. I'm just glad this was before I married Lisa and no one was in the bed with me.

I've told these experiences to my family, and one sister seems to think I have deep psychological issues. While I don't think she's too serious about that claim, there's one thing I do know for sure: I'm very glad my brothers are only jerks in my subconscious.