Please forgive me if I don’t give you much chatter to chat about in the next few days.  It’s Christmas and, as most of the wives out there know, that means all sorts of fun…  Cleaning the kitchen every five minutes. Not because of your own children’s messes but from the grownup visitors that can’t seem to dump out their own cups.  Peeling and chopping potatoes missing the fingers by inches.  Preparing for the onslaught of relatives that will ascend in the next couple days with their children in tow ready to smear their virus slimed hands all over my baby’s toys. Gee, I never thought the dog looked good with teething rings around his tail but who knew?  Oh, and lets not forget the wonderful image that comes to mind when your elbow deep in a turkey’s butt.  Yep, FUN!  

Ok, so it’s not that bad.  But I’m tired tonight from a long day of preparing for the coming festivities and feeling a little feisty.  I love to see the family, even the booger monsters.  I can’t wait to give them all the gifts I’ve been hoarding for the last year.  I’m a bargain, store it all year in the back of the closet because I found so and so the BEST GIFT EVER, always looking for the best deal kinda gal.  Dear Hubby likes that about me too.  Not the hand slapping when he gets near something that I might have bought for him but the fact that I save loads of money this way.  The only real problem is finding all the stuff I bought all year. I’m still missing my sister’s gift but I’m just going to give it to her for her birthday.  She won’t mind.   

So that’s where I’ll be for the next few days.  I’ll make sure to check in and say hi soon!

Merry HO HO HO!  And to all a good night!

 I also can’t seem to allow myself to print out address labels to make my life easier.  I feel that if I did that I would be cheating on the whole purpose of sending a personal Christmas card to someone.  If the insurance companies and the banks want to send out pre-printed cards then more power to them.  But I’m not an insurance company and I’m damn sure not a bank, so I have to write them out and address them all by hand.  I will, however, admit to cheating on one level.  Our return address labels are printed. But in my defense, that’s because the insurance company that sends me a nice pre-printed card each year also sends me address labels for each season.  And since they’re a gift I have to use them right?  I’ve never understood this practice of sending us the labels but I’ll take them.  I pay a fortune for coverage each year, I might as well get some free return address labels out of it.  

This year Dear Hubby and I, in honor of our sweet new baby and her first Christmas, have joined the pod people in the world who send out picture cards to everyone they know.  It’s not like all my friends and family don’t already see the loads of pictures I spam their e-mail with every week.  Now they are going to get it in their Christmas cards too.  I’ve always hated these picture cards personally.  Not because it’s not pleasant to see my friends smiling faces and cute kids but because I never know what to do with them later. I have an ever growing stack of these cards that live in the attic in one of the boxes we pack our Christmas decorations in.  I don’t have the heart to throw away pictures of my friends and their families after Christmas is over like I do with the other more traditional cards.  Yep, toss them out.  Otherwise I would drown in the paper. Besides, by putting them in the recycle box I’m saving a tree.  That’s how I justify enjoying what otherwise would seem a heartless act of chunking the stack in the bin each year with a satisfying “thunk” sound.  I do have an exception to the rule.  I keep the funniest cards.  I don’t know why or what I’ll do with them but they live with the all the picture cards of Christmases past.   I can probably document many of my friends growing families and graying/balding heads with these cards.  One day I might just be able to return them to their senders as a collage of their own cards.  That could be cool. Hmm, have to think on that one.   

So here I sit with my stack of cards preparing to address them and send them on the way.  The stack isn’t going to get any smaller with me just complaining about it.  I’ll apologize to my family now that their gifts will be so tiny.  I had to put the extra money I would normally spend on your gifts towards postage for all these cards.

Read it and sleep on it.  You might wake up a better person.

Our next step was to get her on Santa’s lap without her tripping out over the big, furry, fat man in more crushed velvet.  As we took her up to Santa he instructed me not to turn her towards him and just place her in his lap with out her getting a good look at him.  It worked!  She snuggled up in his big arm like she belonged there. She even looked up at him a couple times and graced him with a smile.  Christmas miracle number two.  

After we took the pictures he told me why he instructed me put her in his lap backwards and it was so smart.  This is my first experience with the mall Santa thing so I was pretty amazed at this one.  I think I was expecting to have Santa be like some of the characters you see in the movies where the Santa is some creepy drunk guy secretly “coveting” the elves during his breaks.  This Santa was so nice and friendly he had me posing the thought as I looked at him “WOW, if Santa was real this is him”  Maybe this is  like the movies where the mall Santa, that everyone takes for granted, is really the true, flying through the air in a gold rocket led by magical flying reindeer going ho ho ho all the way real SANTA!  His beard was real people!!  And he had the kindest eyes and the nicest voice.  Gave me a good dose of Christmas spirit which I needed this year.  Christmas miracle number three.  

Dear Hubby and I decided before we got there that we wanted pose in the pictures with Santa and EJ.  Hubby kinda stood/squatted next to him on the side that EJ was on and I sat on Santa’s other knee.  Since I didn’t want to squish him, not realizing that he really was big enough to fill out that Santa suit and that I wasn’t going to mush him at all, I kinda sat leaning over towards EJ in some weird hunch.  While I’m very proud of myself and I feel like I’m winning the war against the baby weight I gained, tonight however, the weight won the battle.  As I hunched over all the “extra” hunched over too creating this odd spare tire look that didn’t agree with my shirt.  I did the sit and pose test when I got dressed to make sure all my clothing worked with my body for the picture.  I did all I could but I didn’t assess my outfit for hunching.  When I stand I don’t have this problem, and when I sit normally I don’t either.  All you moms out there know what I’m talking about.  It may look great standing still but the minute you move you break the seal and it all comes loose.  Anyways, after looking at the pictures we took with Santa and EJ I mentioned to Hubby that I looked horrible in the pictures.  He agreed with me.  Normally this would be a profound reason to hit the hormonal ceiling but in this case it was nice that he agreed with me.  That’s when we decided to have EJ take a picture with Santa on her own.  This time she got a good look at him before she was placed on his lap and she did start to freak out a little but then she just suddenly stopped.   She graced us all with BIG grins and great pictures to choose from.  Thinking we would have to pay for another sitting fee we were discussing it with the “picture lady” and she offered to just put the picture on a CD for $10 more instead of charging us again.  This was very nice of her because she didn’t have to do that.  Christmas miracle number four and five.

This first Santa experience has been a wonderful one and I really wanted to share it with all of you.  I tell you what, it’s hard to believe that this man wasn’t Santa.  I think I’m starting to believe again.   Now I guess I need to start thinking about what to ask Santa for.  What would you ask him for if you could?