Christmas - Southern Style

My sister and I spent a lot of time in Florida before Christmas this year so our family was looking for things to do besides preparing for the next party or drinking all the red wine on the east coast. My parents had some free tickets to the Daytona Experience nearby so we went over to check it out. None of us are really Nascar fans, but it was still pretty fun. It was nearly deserted, so there were no crowds or lines for anything. One of the stops on the freezing cold tour was the Victory Lane area where you could get your picture taken as race winners. We hammed it up and whooped and hollered in our victory celebration - I would post the picture but I look like I'm in some pretty serious pain from the exertion of holding my arms up in victory. Also, there's a rumor that none of us had showered that day. (Hey, we were all on vacation...) We found out that my dad would never make it as a racecar driver while my sister and I would likely put ourselves and others in great mortal danger as soon as the engines started.

For our second redneck excursion we headed to the flea market. We have a Christmas tradition of doing a $5 gift exchange where we draw names and head to the nearest mall. To make it more interesting, we hit the flea market this year. I was a little worried about our ability to find gifts, seeing as how about three-quarters of the booths were closed, but there was no cause for concern. We all split up and headed in different directions. I found a huge portion of a warehouse set up with folding tables and cardboard boxes labeled from $1 up to $5. I'm pretty sure most of the merchandise fell off the back of a truck or was recalled for safety reasons and resold to flea market dealers. We all got funny, somewhat terrible gifts for each other and had fun exchanging them and explaining the reasoning behind our purchases once we got home.

We headed up to Kentucky after Christmas, making a stop in Georgia where my sister and I got schooled in Wii golf by our three year old cousin. Fortunately for us, we were able to prevail in bowling. This morning we celebrated my second consecutive birthday at the breakfast area of the Holiday Inn in my hometown. The afternoon may or may not have been spent reading a certain preteen vampire novel aloud to my sister as we drove back to Tennessee. All in all, an excellent holiday.