Carlisle's Diary

Happy Holidays!

Dear Diary:                                                           December 24, 2013

Lions and tigers and dragons, oh my! That was a pretty spectacular battle and one I'm glad I didn't have to fight. That's way beyond my or my family's level of expertise. Glad we could stay home and watch from a distance. But that's over and done with; Rogue doesn't think we should have any more problems for a while. Let us hope she's right; with our luck there's always something around the corner. But that's the past and in the present we are preparing for the holidays just like I'm sure you all are.

When it comes to religion and such not everyone celebrates Christmas; for example Rogue and Alexander are Jewish while Kim is an atheist altogether. Everyone else does; but the above-mentioned three don't mind, so we got the house ready for both Christmas and New Year's Eve. Being so far up north, we have a ton of snow already so people were out building forts and having snow ball fights; and by people I mean Michelle, Emmett, the wolves (Jacob, Seth, and Leah), and their mates (Nessie, Corin, and Keith). Alice, Bella, Rogue, Kim, and Amy decorated the interior of the house which including the ginormous tree we put up in the great room. Yes we have a great room in this house; the reason it hasn't been previously mentioned is because we only use it for holidays. They decorated not only the great room but the rest of the house including everyone's bedrooms!

Rose, Maria, and Esme were cooking up a storm in the kitchen for the feast that we were going to have. The men including Edward, Jasper, John, Alexander, Peter, and I were decorating the exterior of the house; climbing on the roof and such as well as the property surrounding. By the time we were done with the decorating alone, you'd think it looked like all of the lights of Las Vegas put together in a much smaller setting. The Denali's were staying with us until after the New Year so we made extra room for them. They hadn't yet arrived at that point so we had time to kill so to speak.

Let me explain how we decided to deal with presents this year. Because we had such a shear amount of people and due to all the insanity we had gone through this year plus the fact that we already had pretty much everything imaginable; not to mention the latest in everything that we decided that in lieu of presents, we were going to donate to our favorite charities. We all regularly donated money or other things to about 8 charities. We are grateful for everything we have so therefore we love to give back to those less fortunate. The charities we donate to as well some of the other photos are below. The Denali's agreed to this as well; The Watchers have donated before so this wasn't new to them. We did agree that the only presents that were allowed to be given would be from one mate to the other; something private and special. It would make everything very easy and helpful at the same time. We felt like a bunch of Santa's for the people out in the world.

Once the Denali's arrived, most of the men went to cut down some trees or break them in our case for the fireplaces in the houses. I honestly don't know what every single person was doing but I did see Nessie, Michelle, Leah, Jacob, Seth, and Corin making snow angels and a really life-like looking snow man; in between chucking snow at each other that is. As we walked passed them carrying the wood, we were all bombarded with a ton of snowballs and a fit of giggles. At that point, we dropped the wood and had an old fashioned snowball fight. You would think we would use up all the snow but we got so much of it that there was enough for a supernatural snowball fight. Sooner or later everyone migrated outside and joined the barrage of snowballs. At first it was men against women; then at one point Jacob chucked one at me, which I sidestepped nicely. It flew past me towards the back door from which Rogue was emerging; knowing what was happening she ducked her head in the nick of time but Rose who was following behind her didn't have a chance to and the snowball smacked her dead center in the face!