So we're 50% finished with Christmas. Today, it starts all over again with Christmas Eve II: Christmas Evealoo.

My sister and her boyfriend get in this evening, and so we're wrapping presents tonight and watching Muppets and hanging stockings, and then tomorrow we're having a full Christmas. Which is actually quite excellent, because yesterday we spent about four hours opening presents (yeah, I know), so it was nice to go see my parents and just hang out, and this way the presents last for longer.

As detailed in the previous entry, the highlight of my gifts was the impending Wii, but my in-laws also got me a variety of highly excellent things. My brother- and sister-in-law got me a hilarious Pirates of the Cowibbean shirt, in which a cow is wearing a peg leg, an eyepatch and an earring and has a parrot on his shoulder (hee), and the dice game from the Pirates movie. My other brother- and sister-in-law got me a really nice outfit, and their kids got us a board game. (Artifact - I hear it's good. Do any of you friends of mine know how to play so we don't have to try to figure it out?)

My mother- and stepfather-in-law got me a subscription to Entertainment Weekly (woohoo!), a movie gift certificate and a pile of gift certificates for my favourite movie rental place (which my father- and stepmother-in-law also got us, although for a different movie place, which means I can rent a ton of TV on DVD to watch while I knit), some snacks, a variety of little goodies in my stocking, a chocolate fondue kit, and SHOES!

Whee! Shoes! Now, usually I am not very exciting about shoes, because I wear my Dansko clogs pretty much all the time and my running shoes if I'm not wearing my clogs. But my clogs have a tear in them, so I asked for a new pair. So I got a $200 gift certificate for Gravity Pope, which is the best shoe store in town that happens to carry the Danskos. Awesome! I'm way too cheap for shopping there usually, but this meant I could go shopping with abandon. I looked up their website and discovered they were having a HUGE boxing week sale, so I called up Kristy today (ah, it's good to have friends whose immediate reaction to "wanna go shoe shopping?" is "let me get my coat.") and we headed down. Normally I would avoid Boxing Day shopping (unlike in the U.S., it's a holiday here so everyone in the universe is out shopping except for the poor people who work retail), but since I'm busy the rest of the week it was my only chance to go before Sunday, and I figured they'd be sold out of everything by Sunday.

It was an absolute zoo in the store, not helped by the malfunctioning security system that kept going off randomly. After several attempts by the helpful shoe guy to find my size in clogs that were on sale, he brought me a black pair and a brown pair. (I was tempted by the red ones but they weren't on sale, and I decided I'd rather have two pairs than one red pair, even though they were excellent.) I settled on the black ones and decided that if they didn't have any other shoes I liked in my size, I'd get the brown ones too. I rejected several pairs - I have big feet and many shoes make them look like boats - and a lot of the ones I liked they didn't have in my size.

But then I spotted these.



They aren't as pink as that photo would have you believe - more of a purple. And they are so cute and, more importantly, comfortable! And they are totally the cutest shoes I've ever owned, and they were on sale! So I got both my clogs and these for only the price of GST. Woo!

I'm going to wear them to the airport and freak out my sister. The fact that I have purply sparkly shoes with a heel on the will totally knock her over. Hee.

And tomorrow is another round. Woohoo!