A Day in My Life

Christmas Vacation

Once the tree was set up, the boys all sat on the couch, which was across from it, and Emma and I sat on the floor , opening up the boxes of ornaments. Blake had just wrapped the tree in lights, so now we were at the fun part. 

"Hey, isn't this a little sexist?" Emma asked. 

She added "I mean, the girls have to do all the decorating while the guys get to comment on where they should go and just watch. Is that fair?" 

Dylan said "Come on. We all know you girls know where you want them all to go and you'll just move ours anyways."

I looked at Emma and whispered "It's kinda true."

She giggled and agreed. 

Blake put on some christmas songs in our old CD player and we began. Emma and I held up ornaments we had gotten from years ago. 

We had one for each of our births, some of our birthdays, and events like our first house being built, our many trips, and our old pets. We passed them around for everyone to remember and then placed them (perfectly) on the tree. 

I was sifting through our boxes for a pretty one and suddenly saw a green sparkly palm tree our mom must've bought years ago. 

"What's this?" I asked, holding it up for everyone to see.

Talen said "I don't know, check the bottom." Once we had accumulated many ornaments, our mom had gotten a sharpie and sat down and written what the ornament was for on the bottom. I flipped it over. 

"It says 'Hawaii Vacation'. We never went to Hawaii." I said, confused.

Blake said "Yes we did! You don't remember?" 

"No." I said, racking my brain. I had no memory of white sand beaches and glowing blue water.

"I remember!" Dylan said. "That was like one of my best memories ever!"

"Oh! I probably wasn't born yet." I said, finally understanding. 

"Well that's probably why its my best memory, then." Dylan said, smiling at his own joke. I stuck my tongue out at him. 

"Wait a minute! You guys all went to Hawaii without me?" I complained. 

Blake said "Sorry, but you weren't born yet. You can't blame us for that!" 

"Fine." I allowed, plopping down on the couch. 

The others stepped up and filled some of the tree in while I directed. Soon, all the ornaments were clumped on our gorgeous tree until the majority of the branches were bending down, some even touched the ground. It was perfect. We all admired it and then split up to wrap the presents. I got a small snack and then began to walk upstairs and was stopped by Nick.

"Hey Kota, got a second?"

"Sure." I said, pausing.

"Do you think you could wrap my present for me?" he asked. "I already put it in  a small box so you won't know what it is!" he added, holding it out in a hand.  

"Alright." I said, feeling pride. I was possibly the best christmas present wrapper in the world, and my family knew it. 

"Thank you!" he said, leaning forward and kissing my forehead. 

I opened my eyes wide. 

"What?" he said defensively. "You're doing me a favor! And it's Christmas time!"  

I took the box from him with a smile, tucked it under my arm, and kept walking upstairs. When I got to the top, Eric stopped me. 

"Hey, Kota, you're good at wrapping stuff right?" he said. I think I knew where this was going.