Thursday, December 25, 2008

Psst...

"Jingle all the Ray"
Yeah, yeah, yeah,  I know.  I'm stuck.  "It'll be fun" she said.  "Come on, the kids will love it."  I knew I was going to get stuck.  Now, the kids are hysterical.   They think I chased Santa up the chimney to get his toys.  Claudia's trying to calm them down.  One of them was trying to hit me with the fire poker.    

I should be half way through my second Bloody Mary by now.  How does she rope me into these things?  Every holiday it's the same old story.....just five minutes here or an extra mile there.  I still have paper cuts from all the wrapping.

It all started out fine.  I'm on the roof, rope in hand.  I tie off the rope and start my descent.  I worry about scuffing my boots and lung cancer.  I'm making good progress and I actually believe that this time, everything is going to be OK.  Then it happens, I spot a big roach crawling down a brick after me.  I yell at it.  Unfazed, it leaps from the brick and floats downward, landing on my Santa beard.  I scream like a girl and thrash around trying to dislodge the roach.  I begin to fall and am grateful.  Then I stop falling.  Somehow my belt has gotten hooked on something.  I try chewing the beard loose.  I frantically chomp and spit and shake my head.  I hear crying.......it's not me.  I've done it, the beard has fallen.  I'm free of the beard and the roach but the kids are horrified.  They'll need some kind of therapy after this one.  This is not my fault.

Anyone out there have a similar story?  What worked and what didn't this year?  What was hot and what was not?  Go on, let's hear it.  I've got all day.


14 comments:

azlori said...

MERRY CHRISTMAS HLA!!!! Sorry Julie, you don't get first post today! (Not because I got up earlier than you...only because I've yet to go to bed!) Nellie, aka "The Jeep", is doing fine so far!
I hope I have no crazy/bad Christmas stories to post...but my husband did go to bed tonight with a 100.1 fever...hopefully that will break and he will be able to enjoy tomorrow. Could of been his way if getting out of the last minute wrapping etc....hummm....
Well I hope everyone has a great Christmas and that everyone stays safe during this holiday season. Take care!

Anonymous said...

MERRY CHRISTMAS, HLA!!!

The youngest member of our household is still asleep. It may seem a little backwards until we tell you she was paraded around like a circus animal yesterday and is exhausted. Can we wake her up? Is that allowed? Because we're getting ANXIOUS!

We're also glad that Roscoe, aka Nellie, now has a middle name: Roscoe Nellie Schnepp. Can you please go out and tell it Merry Christmas for me?

Coffee's a brewing
Breakfast's a baking
(yummy cinnamon rolls and chocolate chipper muffins)
Present's a wrapped and will be a opening

*** That wasn't supposed to rhyme **

Peggy said...

We were accousted at 7:01 am by two amazon children... I was in the middle of a great dream too!

All presents were opened and wrapping disguarded by 7:52am.
Shortly there after... I went back to bed with the dog!

Cinnamon rolls were gobbled up at about 9:05 am.

Now we are getting ready to hit the road to head up to my parent's home in Wisconsin!

It seems like all of the gifts were warmly and excitedly received.

I'll check back in later, when we get back from over the river and through the snow drifts!!!

Part 2 of my holiday letter on my blog if you are interested...
http://prdesigns.blogspot.com

Cheryl Houston said...

THAT. IS. HILARIOUS.

Seriously. I'm crying that is so funny. I'm going to be laughing all day. I am sure there HAS to be a Christmas story like that in my family. It was just too dysfunctional not to but the brain is a mysterious and wonderful machine that blocks memories like that out. :)

The only thing making any noise over here are the washer and dryer. Going to go make some coffee and a little breakfast and get ready to go see the new Brad Pitt movie with my friend, Margaret. Then, I head over to Colleyville to spend the rest of the day with one of my best friends that I grew up with and her family. Tomorrow- I'm a mad shopping woman until the money runs out. :)

Be safe driving, Peggy.

Katie said...

This did not happen to me in particular, but I was there to witness it and it's too funny not to pass along.

Every Christmas Eve, my dad's side of the family gathers at his parent's house for dinner and the opening of gifts. Over the years, my grandparents have been known to mis-label some boxes, forget some gifts, etc. My mother and aunt have tried to make this as simple as possible for them, as they're getting older, by doing all the buying for them, labeling it all, and then my grandparents just wrap it all. Well, apparently this year, my aunt has begun to "lose it" as well.

As we were separating gifts and making piles for each person, we realized my uncle only had one gift- from my brother, his Godson. We looked at my aunt, who was responsible for bringing the gift for my Uncle from his parents. She just started to laugh when she realized she had left it at home. He was supposed to be getting an ipod. So, as to not make my grandmother upset, my cousin got her PINK ipod out of her purse, put it in a bag that was meant for a gift for my older brother (who was not there), and put it in my Uncle's pile. Comes along the time for him to open it, and we're all in tears in laughter of his beautiful pink ipod with a bag marked "Mark Jr." for a guy named Steve. Best part of all? Grandma had no clue!

Moral of the story: we're all losing our minds!

Anonymous said...

Merry Christmas, everyone! Well, we had a bit of a nightmare this year when we were preparing to leave for our early Christmas celebration with our families down in Georgia last weekend. Last Thursday night, I stayed up late baking bread for a couple of family members, and working frantically to prepare to leave the next afternoon when my husband got off work. We were planning to drive down Friday night, have four different Christmas celebrations with various parts/sides of our families, and then head home early Sunday afternoon. So while I'm baking bread, my husband came in from this game night thing he does with his buddies on Thursdays, and he had an awful look on his face. He was sick. Very, very sick. More sick than I've seen him the entire time I've known him. It seemed like a stomach bug, but no one we knew was sick, so we guessed it was food poisoning from the holiday luncheon he had at work earlier that day... deli meat sitting out on trays for the better part of the day, and of course, he didn't have the sense to heat it up before eating! That was around 10:30. I finally went to bed around 2:00. I couldn't sleep because I had a lot on my mind, and at around 3:30, I started getting sick. My research tells me that you can actually catch food poisoning, so if it wasn't a bug, we're pretty sure that's what happened because I made the mistake of giving him a big ol' kiss when he came home that day. Needless to say, we were up ALL night and completely out of energy and afraid to eat for all of Friday. In the end, we ended up not being able to leave town until Saturday morning, and we did three Christmases in 23 hours (including sleep time)... had to skip one of them, and didn't get home 'til about 2 am Monday. And to top it off, I forgot all the bread I made and three family members' gifts in the rush to get out the door. We had a great (but limited) time with our families and a wonderful Christmas, but it was a tough weekend. We're SO glad to be home right now and having a nice, quiet day together as a family.

Kristen Giger said...

In true HLA fashion Jory and I attempted to be creative in our gift giving to Julie...we wanted to not only give her a gift, but maybe help her conquer a fear as well...This gift involved duct tape, lots of wrapping, lat/long clues via GPS and an afternoon of trecking around...while I personally thought the final destination was an awesome place, she never quite got there...I'll let her tell the story. She ended up throwing a snowball down my back and told me that she has approx. 364 days to plot her revenge...

Claudia @ Highlowaha said...

Wow! Stacie should win some kind of award for her Christmas saga. Three Christmases in 23 hours and you were typing your story at only 3:37 p.m. on Christmas day! Your story makes me tired.

Julie, hopefully you'll share your story. My curiosity has been peaked.

Julie said...

#1 - I am scared to death of heights. I mean, I don't even like going up 2 steps on a step ladder.

#2 - I figured out what my Christmas gift was going to be in November, and made the mistake of letting Kristen know that I knew.

#3 - Kristen is REALLY creative, sadistically creative at times.

Box under tree to me from my sister and brother-in-law, wrapped in duct tape, packaging tape, layers of newspaper and various wrapping papers. Take above wrapping, and throw in a box inside of a box. Only after navigating through those layers did I find ... A CLUE ...

Clue #1 had me drive to the neighborhood park that we grew up playing at with a set of coordinates to find clue 2

Clue #2 had me drive to one of the local colleges, tramp through crusty snow mounds, without any coordinates, thanks to the recent snow fall smudging note #1's clue. I finally find clue #2 to lead me to clue #3.

Clue #3 had me ... go UNDERNEATH A 200 FOOT HIGH BRIDGE ... of a highway ... and attempt to climb up through the steel frame of this bridge to one of three cat walks. ... 30 minutes later, I still hadn't convinced myself that it was possible to do, and ended up sending my brother-in-law, running across the cat walk, to get my gift "QUICKLY!" ... as he ran to get it (motivated by my shear fear) I had a nervous break down telling Kristen to "get me down now!" ... I didn't "overcome" any fear of heights, and I sure wish that I could have just climbed a regular ladder. I probably would have been able to convince myself to do that.

Oy vay! ... Off to bed ...

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!

Julie said...

Also, Kristen's shining moment of the day was when she was trying to figure out what the front of a card that I made her said:

INSP
IRA
TION

pronounced
"Inspa"
"Iyra"
"Tye-on"

I had taken the word "Inspiration" and had just centered it on the card ... we'll chalk it up to it being early morning!

Claudia @ Highlowaha said...

JULIE... are you kidding me?!?!?1

All that and you're not going to tell what the present was?!?! That is nothing short of criminal.

Post now. Inquiring minds need to know.

Cheryl Houston said...

I just got home from my Christmas dinner with my high school friend, Kristi and her family. It was delicious and as always, fun. Curious Case of Benjamin Button was so good but be sure to go to the bathroom prior to the movie because it is long.

I feel like it's always something around here. Today my garage door opener broke. BOO!

Okay, I have to hit the sack because I have a lot of shopping to do tomorrow.

I can't believe you told that whole story Julie and you didn't even tell us what the gift is!

Kristen Giger said...

since Julie is just waking up, and today's post is still in the works...

We got her one of those decals to put on the windshield of her Jeep that says "If you can read this, roll me over!"
Adventuresome gift for and adventuresome gal, from her adventuresome family, for her adventuresome vehicle...it all went with the "theme"

Claudia @ Highlowaha said...

Aahhhh, and I see... your efforts to get Julie to take on a new adventure were all part of it.

The best laid plans...