Christmas Hoopla

Andrea at Lifesong tagged me to do this Christmas meme hoopla.

1. List 12 random things about yourself that has to do with Christmas.

2. Please refer to it as a 'hoopla' and not the dreaded 'm'-word

3. You have to specifically tag people when you're done. None of this "if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged" stuff is allowed...then nobody ends up actually doing it. The number of people who you tag is really up to you -- but the more, the merrier to get this 'hoopla' circulating through the blogosphere.

4. Please try and do it as quickly as possible. The Christmas season will be over before we know it and I'd like to get as many people involved as possible.

5. If you want to -- please give me, Andrea, some link-love as the 'Hoopla-Creator'. I love new blog-traffic.

(I was also recently tagged by Rhonda to do a post about 7 random things about me. Since I've done that about a bazillion times, I am going to count this 12 random things towards that tag too. I hope that's okay, Rhonda!)

And so- here are my 12 random bits of information:

1. I love Christmas time and I always have.

2. When I was little my parents and brothers and I always set up our tree together every year. We had Christmas music playing, egg nog to drink and cookies to eat.

3. We always had an artificial tree (due to my dad's allergies) and I always wished we could have a real tree.

4. I LOVE egg nog, but I do not like it when there has been milk added to it. My dad and Rich love to add milk to thin it out. Yuck!

5. I was always in the Christmas play at our church. Although I'm shy this never seemed to bother me for some reason.

6. We always went Christmas caroling with our church and I loved doing that.

7. When I was little we always spent Christmas Eve at my great Aunt Winnie's house. There were lots of relatives and lots of fun. I remember we always had to eat dinner before we could open presents. The adults would always sit around and talk while they ate dinner- and it seemed like they took forever- I think they were trying to drive us kids insane while we waited to open our gifts.

8. We always woke up bright and early Christmas morning. My dad would read us the Christmas story- the real one, right from the Bible. Then we'd open our presents.

9. Later in the day we'd go to my grandparent's house for more presents and Christmas dinner.

10. Although this didn't happen on Christmas- we always went to visit my mom's side of the family for New Years. Since we never saw them on Christmas- this was our time to celebrate with them.

11. When I was a teenager me and my closest friends would always have a little Christmas get together. We'd exchange gifts and eat goodies and laugh like crazy people. One year we decided to go Christmas caroling- I think there were 4 or 5 of us. Anyhoo- none of us were really spectacular singers- we weren't bad, just not that good. So, it was probably pretty interesting for our listeners. At one house we started our song in much too high of a range. There was no way we could actually hit the necessary notes- so we simply dissolved into laughter.

12.. Now that I have my own home- we have tried the real tree deal. I hated it. About three years ago I decided I was done dealing with the mess of a real tree and we bought an artificial one. It's easier to leave a fake tree up until February or March than a real one.

And so- that is my 12. Now I usually like to break rules and not really tag anyone- but since I like Andrea so much I'm going to follow the rules and tag: KC, Grams, Shaunda, Andrea, and Zamejias.