![\"xmas1\"](\"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/xmas1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe iguana typically spends most of December in the tree.\u00a0 Doubly so this year because we put the tree where her enclosure used to be.<\/p>\n
First of all, I usually get in a good, long-ish run (7+ miles) to offset what’s about to happen unless it happens to be offseason (like 2012), then it may just be a rest day. It just doesn’t feel right to start Christmas eve without sweat though!<\/p>\n
Zliten’s family always did presents on Christmas Eve.\u00a0 We kept this one because it became our own little holiday, just us two, no matter what we had going on for the actual day. Sometimes we work that day, sometimes we don’t (this year, Zliten does, I don’t because I had lotsa paid time off to burn), but when we’re both home, it’s on.<\/p>\n The celebration starts with some sort of food we can pick at for the rest of the day.\u00a0 The last few years, it’s been Din Ho chinese food – something like wonton soup, veggie delight, something with chicken, and beef noodle.\u00a0 Then, we pour a drink – in the past it’s been absinthe for a green Christmas – but we’ve fallen out of that after finding the hangover the next day of sugar and high proof liquor to dampen the actual holiday a bit.<\/p>\n My family had gotten the gifts from the Manly Man Company<\/a> and made us wait until after Christmas dinner to open presents, which I still at age 36 think is bullshit, so we start the great gift opening as soon as we’ve had our first bites and sips.\u00a0 My father’s side of the family is Jewish, he dropped that way before I was in the picture, but I suppose we incorporate a small bit of that in the way we do gifts.\u00a0 We both enjoy getting each other a crap ton of presents (usually about 12, but sometimes we can’t control ourselves), but most of them are really small.\u00a0 Past years have included things like cans of soup and chapstick and socks.<\/p>\n We open one present every 30 mins or hour (depending on how late the festivities start and how quickly we need to wrap things up to not be up until 4am) and typically watch Christmas movies or play Christmas music (or sometimes watch something we received as gifts – one year I gave Zliten all the Harry Potters and made him open them first, and we watched them all day).\u00a0 It’s an excessive orgy of unwrapping and stuff, but I love it.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n