Christmas Memories Part II

Here we go to Part II!

6. Nutcracker. This word brings back so many Christmas memories it is unreal. Whenever the word comes up, I hear the sound of the Grand Rapids Symphony playing the famous overture and I can see the first scene of the beautiful ballet. My friends and I, since freshman year of high school, were apart of Grandville High School Choir. Every Christmas, our choir had the chance to be the choir for 3 different Nutcracker performances that season. Basically, we always had a blast and something weird always happened. This particular year, none of us were 16 so we had to have our parents drop us off and pick us up downtown at Devos Hall. We were all dressed in our long, black choir dresses and slippers and just experienced the magic that is the Nutcracker. I could go on and on about the memories from this, but the one that we always joke about even still is when Brynne and I ran in and stepped on this old lady. We were all walking to go to the lobby at the end of the show, when all of the spectators were also coming out. This particular lady, dressed in a long fur coat carrying a cane (yes, carrying because I don’t even think she really needed it), somehow ended up smashed between Brynne and I. We were just on our merry way loving life, when suddenly her and I physically ran into this woman. We got her good, too. Brynne stepped on her left foot and I stepped on her right foot, and the funny part was neither of us knew that the other one had also stepped on her. We both just kept on going after we said, “Sorry!” Did it end there? No. She picked up her cane yelled at both of us to get our attention and proceeded to ask us if it was everyday that we ran over handicapped people. After a lecture right there in front of a lot of people, Brynne and I continued to find our friends as we were trying to hold in our laughter. Oops.

7. Caroling freshman year with Chelsey and Lindsay and a bunch of random people was probably the coldest experience of my life. You could get chapel credit if you caroled to surrounding streets around Huntington. Of course, the three of us (naturally) were extremely low on chapel credit so we basically had to do this. It was literally 3 degrees out that night and Chelsey was not wearing boots and my gloves got wet; not exactly dressed for the elements. We got in a group with a few people we sort of knew, grabbed our music and were off. I still remember we caroled along Opal street, rang the doorbells and just started singing. The three of us were the worst singers out there, and in between Silent Night and Jingle Bells we complained about how cold we were and how we were never going to step foot outside again. But to this day, we still talk about that night because it was one of those nights where Christmas really looked like Christmas.

8. I could probably go on and on about the following pictures, but I won’t. In basic terms, every Christmas Hardy Hall, the last week of classes, has a floor decorating contest. All four floors pick a different theme and just run with it. Our floor , the infamous Hardy First, naturally waited until the very last minute to start decorating. All the other floors had master plans and blueprints and had scheduled times for decorating. Not us. Just six days before we would be judged, we got together decided to decorate like Macy’s Department Store (we even included a Santa/sleigh in the back), drove out to Macys to collect any sort of material we could, and then started painting. We had no blueprint, no schedule. All we had were a bunch of crazy girls who truly enjoyed each others company staying up until 4 am every night inhaling paint fumes as we designed signs and costumes listening to Christmas music and drinking crappy hot chocolate. We probably should have been studying for finals the next week, and we probably could have been a whole lot cleaner with the decorating process, but we didn’t and we weren’t, and it was great. I remember going out in pajamas in knee deep snow to collect tree branches to hang at 2 in the morning. I remember dressing up like a mannequin and watching my friends make complete fools out of themselves all in the name of winning. We got like zero sleep that week , and we only got 2nd place (we are all still bitter about that), but I will never forget the first Christmas days I spent away from my family and with this new set of family.

9. As I am writing this I am beginning to realize that a lot of my memories are from my freshman year…oops. It must have been a great year! This memory is from that same freshman year that my family and I spent Christmas in Mexico. It was my grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration so my entire family flew down to an amazing resort and had a great time over Christmas. Each day was filled with my grandpa doing something embarrassing, my dad making some joke that no one thought was funny but him, my cousins trying to push me in the pool, my grandma buying jewelry, Kelly taking us on some dangerous excursion, my uncle and aunt trying to prank everyone, my mom helping me prank people back, and Jessie and I getting unlimited virgin margaritas every half hour. It was a great trip, and I could list about 20 amazing memories just from that Christmas week. One of my favorites is Christmas Eve. Someone forgot to call one of the restaurants to make reservations for dinner. My grandma was super concerned about this and so everyone was just kind of down. After all, it was Christmas Eve and now we had no dinner. We decided the only option was to get room service. We all ordered a dinner and had it delivered to a table near the ocean. In the midst of our complaining, my cousin Jake had us start playing a game of “Would You Rather.” He would ask each person questions like, “Would you rather massage a hairy man’s back for 10 minutes or eat that same man’s toe nail.” The questions got more and more ridiculous each time. When the food was finally delivered, I am pretty sure no one liked what they ordered. Definitely not a Christmas Eve dinner. Never fear, though, Jake had another game: spin the bottle. Yep. The game made us all forget about the fact that our food tasted like cardboard. In fact, our laughter and stupidity totally wiped out the fact that every other person on the resort was eating at some fancy restaurant like we were supposed to be and that we were the only ones eating thin pizza with nasty cheese on it alone by the water on Christmas Eve. And looking back, that night there is other place I would have rather been.

10. I wrote about this last year, but I have to mention it again. Chicago with some of my best friends last Christmas break was pretty memorable. The picture below is all of us at the Bean. We shopped all day, Chelsey, Christen, Lindsay and I got Starbucks twice, made a hilarious cat documentary at Emily’s cousin’s house, I had the best nap of my life (weird that I still remember that), and just spent some quality time with those same girls who invested hours into their lives decorating Hardy First like Macy’s that one Christmas. There is something about Chicago at Christmas with your friends.

That all being said, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Sorry this is just now posted, I had some blogging difficulties.

Good news is that I am currently in Florida and will post again tomorrow!