Merry Christmas, everyone!

My Christmas has been very simple, which is nice. We did the usual dad's-side-of-the-family get together last night. It was much calmer than usual because our noisy, accident-prone cousins (ages 4, 6, and 7) now live in Texas, and it was too far a drive for them for one night. I got some cool stuff, including a bracelet that was blessed by the Pope (as I'm not Catholic, this doesn't mean as much to me as to the other [Catholic] members of my family, but hey, cool). My mom had told me that my aunt and uncle had a good idea for my Christmas present, and so I was really looking forward to it. On the way home, I was like, "So, um... not that I'm ungrateful, but was their great idea gift cards?" "No," my mom said, "Um, they were going to get you a UArts jacket, but..." (for anyone who is unaware, I didn't get accepted into that college). So I'm pretty glad they didn't get that, since that would've been like salt in an almost-healed wound. But it was a really nice get-together (with some amazing chocolate cake), and there was the added plus of me getting my homework done. For CASA, we were supposed to interview the older members of our family about their past. Well, there weren't any elderly family members there except my grandfather, but I'm still a little shy around him since I just met him for the first time in ten years over Thanksgiving. So I had pretty much planned on not doing the assignment becuse I didn't think anyone would be up for it. But I made an off-hand comment about it, and everyone was really into it, so I interviewed the group as a whole and they just told stories and said stuff about their childhood, and then my cousin Amanda did a formal, set-up interview about her philosophies and art (she's an artist). It was a great interview, and nice to have it formal because the others were crazy and people were looking at the camera and stuff.

I got some great theatre-related stuff this morning- I asked for a whole list of plays from my aunt, but I realised that that would get prety expensive if they were $10 a play (I had a list of about 15), so I didn't think I got any. So it was a nice surprise to open a gift bag and afind three of the plays I'd asked for- Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, and Stage Door (the latter of which I'm most excited about- I've been compared to the main character, Terry, but I've never read the play, so this should be interesting). My mom got me A Pictorial History of the American Theatre 1860-1980, which I was super excited about (but would have been more so if she hadn't given it to me to wrap yesterday, thinking it was a gift for my sister ). I also got a historical costume book, which is great- I love looking at costumes, especially from the Victorian era and the 40's. She gave me a book of scenes, too, and the best part about that is that they're from published plays (she knows I'm not a fan of random scenes written for books like that), and a copy of my favorite Shakesperean play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

But possibly the best gift is my keyboard! Should I still be accepted anywhere for musical theatre, I need to learn how to read music, so my voice teacher wants me to switch to piano lessons. This is fine with me, since I've always wanted to learn piano. I was especially excited about my keyboard because, even though I asked for it, I didn't think I would get it.

So now I can really work on my music! Merry Christmas, everyone!