As everyone knows, the meaning of Christmas is to spend time with friends and family. To give gifts to show how much you love those people. Oh come on, who am I kidding, Christmas is all about the stuff you get. You give stuff so that people give you stuff. The nicer stuff you give, the hope is you get some nice stuff back, correct? I know, people are reading this saying to themselves “no way Josh, I do not even care about receiving anything, the joy of giving is a great enough gift.” And to those people I say “Bullshit!” But whatever, this is not about those people, this is about me and all the cool stuff I got this year!
Sadly, I am a poor photographer, so I had to take two pictures in order to get stuff in there (or I did not realize Lindsey was putting stuff away and had to force her to bring stuff back).
As you know, I like bullet point lists, so here you go!
-Banana Republic sweater, it is the gray one with some blue stripes. I have a similar white one that I love.
-Banana Republic thermal, which is a blue & white, which I wore today with my blue vest I got last Christmas, I looked amazing.
-Navy Cardigan. I have wanted one for a few months now, I love wearing sweaters to work, but have wanted to change it up with a nice cardigan. Now my dreams are true.
-Spider-Man tee shirt
-Money clip. I mentioned that I liked Adam2’s money clip and Lindsey got it in her head that she was going to get me one, but she did not know what his looked like so she got a different kind, which her sister used as my gift. Now they are giving me the option of whether or not to return it and find one like Adam got. Not sure what to do…
-Lindsey got me this orange Nike pullover. I do not have enough jacket type things that I can wear on semi-cold days. I complain about this enough, so she made it happen.
-She also bought me a Pittsburgh Pirates travel mug, but she bought a 24 ounce one. It does not fit under the Keurig. Plus, could you imagine the disaster of having me drink 24 oz. of coffee on my way to work? I can barely make it there without pooping my pants after 10 oz. Needless to say, I took it back and exchanged it for the smaller one, plus they had a Penn State one that I liked more. Yay!
-Red Nike Dry-Fit socks. I like colorful socks.
-Green sweater from JCP. I just bought a purple one and love it, so she did well.
-I also got some gift cards for our wedding, Kayla got one for me to get a haircut, Lindsey’s aunt got me one for Macy’s, which worked out well since my Mom got us one for there as well. We will use to buy the rehearsal dinner outfit and my dress shirt/shoes for the wedding.
-Lindsey’s mom got us a new toaster. You have no idea how badly we needed a toaster. Take a look at this shitty old thing.
-My mom bought us a wreath. Not just any wreath though, this is a Penguins wreath. This might seem weird, but I actually love a wreath hanging on our door. So now we have this one to replace the Christmas one. It works out perfectly.
I was not kidding, we took down the one and put this one out today. It looks great.
Kayla and Adam also got us a great canvas picture from our engagement photos. I look forward to hanging it in our apartment, but hope that it only stays up for a short period of time, since we are beginning the house search in the next few weeks.
Lindsey also got some stuff, but really, is that my place to describe all that? I mean, she could start her own blog. I am guessing you want to hear what I got her though.
We set a limit this year and it was supposed to be $50, but we both broke that rule fairly early on. We are not good at following rules.
Anyways, I got her some practical things. But as usual, there will be a story behind all of it.
When we were at the mall the other day, she pointed out a few things at Victoria’s Secret and Aerie that she wanted. Granted she just points at everything and says what size. I did not take notes, but honestly, how hard could this crap be? Apparently hard.
So I went to VS and wanted to buy her yoga pants and a shirt. I had no clue what size, nor did I know there were different styles. Fortunately for me, Kayla answers text messages quickly and was able to help me out. I hate being in that store, I feel like such a weirdo. Plus, while I am trying to find the right size, all of these old ladies are pushing me out of the way. It was annoying.
Then after that I went to Aerie. Lindsey had made it known that she needed new underwear (I know, this is that TMI thing people tell me about). They have a good deal, like 7 pairs for $26.50. I knew what styles she said, but thought she said a certain size. The girl came over and asked if I needed help. I told her what size and what style and she was nice enough to pick seven pairs for me. I also bought her two pairs of the boxer shorts she likes for sleep.
Unfortunately once at home, I started doing laundry and noticed that I had mixed up the sizes at Aerie. I took them back the next day and the girl working this time was also very nice. She exchanged all the underwear and the boxers without me having to do a thing. Most places would have said “okay, go pick out the correct ones and come back to the register.” This girl could see I am not that comfortable going through underwear and helped me out.
Then we exchanged gifts and Lindsey opened her stuff up. The original boxers I bought was actually the right size because these ones were made differently. So today I went back to Aerie and exchanged them again. And I lucked out because the girl who exchanged them before was working and she laughed about it and said “you know, it’s weird because I never put them back in the bin, I left them in the back stockroom.” So she ran back and grabbed them, which worked out perfectly because they no longer had them in the store. That is pretty awesome. Also, if Aerie had one of those surveys on the bottom of their receipt, I would fill it out and give them all the highest scores possible.
Anyways, enough about all that stuff. We got a ton of stuff and it was clearly a great Christmas for us. Look at Lindsey trying to stack the boxes in her own weird version of Jenga.
Oh and we also got to spend time with family, which is always fun. Look at this great picture of cousin Addy with Lindsey.
I hope you all had as great of a holiday as me.
