A Very Sparkles Christmas

I woke up on Christmas morning with a bit of a headache. Too much eggnog the night before, I guess. But Santa had come, and the little girl was itching to check out her bounty. Me, not as much, seeing as how the old Finnish bastard gave me NOTHING.


She's nuts about airplanes, so we put this in her stocking on top of the lump of coal.


Dora the Explorer DVD collection. If you have a child and put this on for him/her, I'd recommend reading a book or magazine while it plays, because it has a tendency to indelibly remain in your head. My wife keeps telling me to fucking stop already repeating "bridge, tree, tall mountain," but I just can't help myself.


18th Letter to Michelle Wie: "better watch your back, you gargantuan freak." Damn, the little angel looks mean here.


A toy cash register that the little girl insists is a computer. Also, the barcode scanner apparently doubles as a cell phone.


A Winnie The Pooh bowling set. I kick ass at this, by the way.


The little girl proudly displays the Elmo logo on her new coat (the sleeves seemed to have been lost during delivery). Fifteen years from now it'll likely be the same thing, only with DKNY. Yay for materialism!



What would Christmas be without a German-made educational toy? I really should have taken a better photo of how those blocks originally fit in the box, because it's really damn hard to get them back in.


Here's the big one!


A Thomas train set. The little girl loves it (as did my wife), but she's absolutely terrified of the train. She runs as far away as possible whenever it comes near. I was reminded of Blaine the Mono from Stephen King's Dark Tower series.




After all of the toy-opening fun, it was off to VIPS for lunch. Seriously, what the hell does that name mean, anyway? I'd understand if it was "vee-eye-pees," but the Korean name, "beepsuh," is just plain weird. It is, however, the best "fresh life restaurant" I've ever been to, so it has that going for it. Which is nice.

We had the buffet, and I was content to sate myself with about 12 tuna sandwiches and 4 liters of raspberry juice.

As you can see, The 18th letter had fun as well: