I wanted to tell the story of Christmas Eve 2009. For anyone following my previous FaceBook notes have read how I feel about the wonderful girl I’m dating and how very lucky I feel just to know her. Some people will go an entire lifetime having never known someone that they can trust completely and someone who they feel much respect from. I think this is unfortunate. I have to go on a small tangent here and say that I’m not sure why people settle for some things in life. Maybe it’s a job or it’s a living arrangement or simply a relationship. I hear more and more people complaining about the “problems” in their life, but then appear to do nothing to try and revert or remove these problems. This is especially true of relationships. I think people are impatient or feel like they can’t do better, so they make the best at what they have. Fortunately, I’ve never been this way and I vowed I would not settle for anything in life that does not make me happy.

Ok, moving on!

My girlfriend draws. She actually draws a lot and she’s very stingy about who gets her drawings, if anybody at all. In fact, she does maybe three drawings a week and I only possess two. Aside from that, she always asks me what she should draw next. For the longest time, I’ve asked her to draw a picture of Elvis for me and she always complained that it would be too hard to do.

Anyway, for Christmas, she brought over to my family’s house a really, really large box for my gift. I couldn’t begin to guess what it was. She wanted us to open our gifts in front of everyone, so we did. I opened this big box and found all sorts of things inside. All the little gifts were related to each other and they all had something to do with Elvis–some books, a cd, a dvd, coffee mug, etc. Then I unwrapped the large gift at the bottom and discovered this:

I couldn’t speak a word, but everyone else thought it was absolutely amazing. I thought it was much more than that, but for the first time ever, I couldn’t say what I wanted to say and for the briefest of moments, time stood still. I couldn’t stop staring at it and at that moment I felt that feeling again. The one I felt the day I met her. It’s a feeling I can’t explain, but it’s similar to what I imagine winning the lottery would be like.

It is the best gift I’ve ever gotten.

I decided to compile a series of clips that I think really captures this essence so when anyone asks this question again, I can just show them the video. With that said, check and out and let me know what you think.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qd4eVE510U

If the video disappears from YouTube, I’ll try and repost it here directly. Also, stay tuned for other vids I may post because I have a lot of ideas in my head.

To date, I think there are like 4 Elvis Christmas albums out. This one, however is slightly more than just the same collection of songs wrapped in a new packaging. I heard about it on the Mark & Brian show on KLOS a few days back. What they’ve done here is use the original Elvis recordings and add new artists to them in the form of duets and I must say as an Elvis fan, this cd was really good!

If you haven’t seen or heard this yet, go check it out on Amazon. Also, there’s a video on YouTube with Martina McBride singing Blue Christmas with Elvis. The video was made by taking Elvis footage from the 1968 tv special called “Elvis” on NBC (popularly known as “The ’68 Comeback Special”) and mixing it with the new footage of a 60′s clad McBride made to look as though she was sitting right next to Elvis. You can see the video here: Elvis sings with Martina McBride