Tag: Christmas

Christmas Tradition

Aside Nick Momrik1 Comment

Every year, the Christmas holiday is celebrated around the world. Each family has their own special Christmas traditions. My family has crab legs for dinner on Christmas Eve, we go to Church, and then come home to exchange gifts. One gift I get every year from my Mom is a container of chocolate covered almonds. […]

I Don't Feel Any Older

Nick Momrik1 Comment

Officially I’m 24 now, but it doesn’t feel any different. To me it’s just another day. The only big difference is that mom makes me a cake and I get a few presents. No real big plans for the day except to probably go out to eat with the family. During the day I’ll most likely hang out with a few friends and then at night we’ll have a “few” drinks I suppose!

I’m glad Christmas is over, but I have to say that the past two days were the most enjoyable Christmas holiday I’ve had in recent memory. Today I crawled out of bed around 10:00, played a few games of March Madness on XBOX, and then took a shower. Dad was just getting done snowblowing the driveway, so we started to mess around with his new GPS for awhile. The device needs to initialize the first time it is used and I think it was having a hard time because of the weather. We’ll have to figure it out when it is a clearer day.

Mom’s family started showing up at our house around 2:00 and almost immediately we started playing poker. I took second place in the first mini tournament, but decided to sit out the second one so that I could snack on all the goodies. Nothing exciting happened and everyone was gone by about 5:30. I had started to play March Madness again and kept playing as everyone left. Eventually I sat down in the living room with Mom and Dad, who were watching World Idol. Both Dad and I were starving, so he made us some eggs and bacon.

After the show was over I went back to playing March Madness. Yes…AGAIN! When Isaac got home from his girlfriend’s, we played head-to-head 3 or 4 games. I won every one and even came back from a 20+ point deficit in one of the games for the win. It’s a pretty sweet game.

In a nutshell, that was how I spent Christmas.

Christmas Tradition

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Every year on Christmas Eve we have a tradition that we follow. Around 5:00 we start off with crab legs for supper. After everything is cleaned up, we open our stockings. For the past few years dad has been in charge of the stocking stuffers and we have a little joke with it. He goes to the dollar store and picks up cheap little things and usually a few lotto tickets. A few examples of things people have gotten in recent years are:

  • Small flashlight
  • Batteries
  • Packs of gum
  • Car air fresheners
  • Socks

We always have fun laughing about what everyone gets, even though some of the things are pretty useful.

We then go to church for 8:00 mass. After church, we take a drive around town and look at some lights and luminaries. What are luminaries? Let me explain…on Christmas Eve a lot of people light candles inside of old milk jugs (or other types of containers) and line them up on the street in front of their house. Every year they look the same, but for some reason we always have to drive by.

Once we get home from church, everyone changes into something comfortable and we usually make a few drinks. Then it’s time to exhange gifts, which takes us about an hour and a half. By the time we get done with presents, dad will be falling asleep and Isaac and I will either be ready to play a new video game or watch a movie.

On Christmas day we always get together with the Tatros (Mom’s family) to eat, play cards, and enjoy the holiday. This year everyone is coming over to our house, so we have to be the entertainers. I suppose we’ll play some Texas Hold’em, since everyone has fallen in love with the game.

The day after Christmas (26th) is of course MY BIRTHDAY, but we’ve never really done anything special for it. It’s really not a big deal to me. I guess this year on the 27th we are heading over to Alpena to get together with Dad’s family and are having a poker tournament over there. It’ll be interesting to see how they run it, since all of the tournaments I’ve been in so far were run by me.

I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable Christmas with their families!

12 Days of Christmas

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I was done working at noon today (the President of SVSU gave us a half day off) and now have 12 days of free vacation time. It’s one of the perks of working for a University.

I plan to spend my vacation:

  • Relaxing
  • Playing poker with family and friends
  • Going to the bar a few times
  • Relaxing some more
  • Working on my website
  • Sleeping in everyday
  • Watching college football and basketball
  • And relaxing

The drive home today wasn’t bad at all. It rained about halfway and the roads were clear the whole way. There was barely any traffic too, which was suprising. I’ll post some pictures from the drive to the photoblog later when I hook up my computer.

Holiday Spirit

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This year is like no other for me in terms of the holiday season. Usually I’m more concerned about me and what I’ll be getting for gifts instead of concentrating on everyone else. This year has been just the opposite. One thing you may have noticed is the title of this post. I didn’t call it Christmas Spirit because I’m more aware that some people don’t celebrate Christmas because of their religions, so instead they get to enjoy some time off work for the holidays.

I didn’t even really realize it until today, but my birthday is only a few days away! That should tell you something right there. I’ll be turning 24 so maybe this is all because I’m getting old…but I don’t think that is it. I bought presents for a lot of people this year, not just for my family. And the people I normally get presents for…they are going to enjoy what they get this year, I’m making sure of it. I can’t post what I bought yet since these people obviously haven’t received their gifts yet. Don’t want to give it away. 😉

Well, I guess I can name a few things. I got Mohamad a chrome Superman license plate cover. Hater and Casey each got 2 DVDs. For Hater I bought 2 SNL “Best Of” movies and for Casey I bought the movie Goonies and a Michael Jackson video compilation.

I haven’t been thinking at all about what I might be unwrapping on Christmas Eve. Instead, I can’t wait to see the looks on the faces of my family when they open what I got them! I’m pretty excited. 🙂

I’ll be heading up north to RC tomorrow so I have a ton of stuff to get done tonight. I’ve already been pretty productive since leaving work. So far I’ve:

  • Bought a few more presents.
  • Picked up packages from the leasing office.
  • Wrapped presents.
  • Paid my bills.
  • Did the dishes.
  • Uploaded new photos to the photoblog.
  • Packed up the laptop and poker chips.
  • Added acronym tags to my entire website.
  • Filled out a rebate form.
  • Thought about how much I have yet to do!

I still have a lot to get done tonight so I better move onto the next task, which will be making dinner, cuz I’m starving!

Let The Shopping Begin

Nick Momrik5 Comments

I finally started my Christmas shopping today. I’ve been dreading going to the stores, but it wasn’t all that bad today. After work I changed and then went to swipe the credit card a few times. I picked up gifts for my mom, sister, and friends. I never really waited in line anywhere and didn’t run into any crazy shoppers attempting to run me over.

This is the first year in history that I’m not all concerned about what I’m getting for Christmas. I guess getting older (24 on the 26th) is part of it, but I’m also paying more attention to the gifts I get for people. So you could say that the “giving” part is playing a bigger role for me. I also have not snooped this year and won’t get to since I won’t be back at my parents until the night of the 23rd of the day of the 24th. Heather (my sister) accused me of snooping through her room, but I swear on all my cool gadgets that I haven’t.

This is a little off topic, but….Today at work I wore black dress pants and realized that for some odd reason I feel a lot more “dressy” in black pants than when I wear khaki, brown, navy, etc. I could be wearing a nice button up shirt with another pair of pants and not feel nearly as dressy as today when I wore a red shirt with a black stripe across the chest. And this shirt is about as close to being a sweatshirt as you can get without being considered one. Mohamad even said, “look at this guy all dressed up,” so I must not be the only one with the feeling about black pants.

Also at work today I was giving another free t-shirt by someone at SVSU. The Dean for the College of Business and Management gave me the first t-shirt from a batch they just had made for all of their faculty and staff. It feels good when people appreciate the work you do for them. My “free t-shirt count” now stands at 3 (not including the ones that Gateway gives us periodically)!