Holiday Recap

(fair warning-this is photo heavy…)

It was a time. Trust me. I’ve got a kid who FINALLY gets the holiday and is really into the fun of it all. So, let’s truck back to the week before Christmas, so I can give you the FULLLL recap. It’s worth it. Trust me.

Earlier in December, Mom had made a call to me from Buffalo, now home of the darling sister and her other half, and said (ready?) “I WANT A WII!!”

My response-”Dream on.”

Well, that sent me on the quest to get them a Wii for Christmas. Yeah. Early December, hottest toy around…this all adds up to delusional Laura.

First attempt: thwarted by a nor’easter. I hate snow. Did I mention that before? Yes, I’m sure I did…

then, we heard about the voucher program at Gamestop. You’d go, pay and get a guaranteed Wii in January! Ok. Fine. I can do that. Armed wtih money for coffee, I got up at the really and truly asscrack of dawn and waited in line.  I was number 3. Yes, 3.

The store only had 25 vouchers to sell for Wiis. I need to take a small detour here…I called 3 gamestop stores before I decided to go to the one I went to. The one at the one mall gave me a magic number, the store I went to gave me a magic number…the one closest to my house were being chowderheads. They said “we’re not giving out numbers because we dont’ want a riot.” Well, dude. EACH store had a poster on the door with the magic number of Wiis they were going to sell vouchers for. For being shady, they lost me as a customer. If all of the other stores are straight with customers, why can’t this one be? When I asked them what the number of wiis were, their response was “Between 9 and 20.” Ummm..yeah. Whatever. Every…stinkin…other…store gave me a number. The idiot patrol must work at this store. I swear! But I digress.

 As we were standing in line, we heard a rumor that they actually had a few in stock, because a truck didn’t come when it was supposed to the day prior.  Now how cool would that be if I scored the hottest toy of the season on a fluke?

Well, we get in, and purchase the vouchers and find out that the truck hadn’t arrived, but it would be there that day or Monday, since it was a Friday. WEEEELLLL…I purchase my voucher and head on home, take a nap, and call mom and tell her she’s got at least a voucher for this thing. Well, 2 pm rolls around and I get a call from Gamestop. I get “Your wii is here!” I shriek, and tell her I’m on my way. (the rule was you had until 6 pm to pick it up or it became fair game and you waited until January to get it…). I changed my IM message to “WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!” and called my mom and yelled “WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!” It took her a good few minutes to get it…but I told her I was on my way.

Wheeeeellllll…..

 Yep, that’s it! I’ve got play privvies at mom’s house…and I told her I’m getting a few games for the boy to play when he’s there, because he’s discovered Frog Bog here at home on the game cube.

and I was injured in the cause. I slipped on some black ice coming out of gamestop and my keys went into my hand. OUCHIES. Man. the things I do…and even my mom said that it’s not a holiday unless I do something absolutely crazy…like turkey bowling…or waiting in line for a wii. Hey. that’s just me.

So, this year, Isaac saw Santa twice! Once at school (they do it every year!) and once at the mall. He was a great sport and really had a good time. He’s now starting to TALK to Santa, and all of that mess. It’s actually a riot. My kid has become the kid who WANTS to see Santa and not run. No anxiety there!

Christmas comes…and we didn’t go to our regular church this year.  It was kind of a protest. The “committee” decided that this year was about the adults and putting on a play for them and pretty much relegating the kids of the church to singing one song and holding posters. Umm..yeah. That really DOES NOT fly with me. I don’t care about an adult play, and I dont’ care that my friend wrote the play-she had it dumped on her..I feel like this is the season to really involve the kids and get them learning about everything. This is the time that lends itself to perfect children’s involvement. But this year, No. Nothing. So, we went to the Weslean church where Isaac did VBS. They did a children’s program with a reception afterward, and if we had known earlier…basically it’s anyone that can walk can be involved. We all really enjoyed it, and Isaac was welcomed back with open arms by his VBS teachers and friends that he made there over the summer. He loved it. It was nice, close to home and kid friendly.

So, then, we had Christmas day….let me show this to you in photos…

So, you get the gist. the kid made out like a bandit. He got a digital camera…and has been the paparazzi, but that’s another post when I can look at the pictures he took without falling off of my chair laughing.

Fast forward to New Year’s eve…

We got…a SNOWSTORM. BLECH! ICK! ARGH! Please, I need my box to get shipped (with me in it) to the corner of Harbor and Katella in Anaheim..you know, back gate of Disneyland!

We got a foot of the wet, heavy stuff that since our snowblower crapped out, I SHOVELED!!! ICK!

Then, New Year’s day, we got another 2-3 inches.

see?

So, Out shoveling I went. This time, I took Isaac.

Oh- and note the new hat….I was NOT happy about knitting this one…but it came out cute…here’s the deal. School convieniently forgot to put Isaac’s dino hat on him the last day before break. It was SITTING IN HIS CUBBY and they wouldn’t wait the 20 minutes for me to get down there to GET it. So, since we had no extra hat laying around, I dug through my stash and found all of the cascade 220 I could find. I was going to knit him a fast skully…but no, the child eyeballed the stocking cap pattern that was on the SAME one as the skully. Well, there went the skully…he picked out the red and chocolate brown colors, and asked for stripes. I went with 2 row stripes instead of the 10 row stripes it called for so I could float the yarn and not have 30 million ends to weave in.  So, I start knitting this sucker, and cast on is 96 stitches. Do you know how long it takes to get 96 stitches decreased to 6 stitches when the first set of 15 decreases happens every 4 rows and then every OTHER row thereafter? I omitted like 35-40 rows and the hat was STILL this long. He would have fallen over if I had made it any longer! WHEEEEEELLLL…this was the LONGEST flippin’ hat. Not only were the decreases spaced out…but there were only 2 per row. Yes, you read that right, 2 per row. Ok, maybe that’s a function of me putting it as a circular knit instead of a straight knit, but again, I didn’t want to seam anything. It was called “knit this hat at warp speed so he has head protection!!” The hat came out cute, and the “seam” of decreases up the back looks realllly cool and gives an orientation for the hat that I can tell the boy-line goes in the back…but geez, next time I’ll give myself more than 12 hours to knit the sucker!

Around here, on top of Christmas, we celebrate 3 Kings Day. It’s a Latino thing…and basically, it’s to celebrate the day that the 3 Wiseguys got to the baby. You leave your shoes out with some fruit, milk and hay for the camels and the Wiseguys and they fill your shoes with treaties!

WEEEEEELLLL, last year Doug forgot my shoes. This year, Doug was too sick to go out and do anything for me for Christmas.

He got me this for last year’s 3 Kings Day, this Christmas and this 3 Kings day! Whoopie!!!

So, I got some material and was going to make a few quick flannel pillowcases because if I screw them up while learning the machine, It’s only for us. WHEEEELLLL, I got some Cars (you know, the movie) flannel and some Buzz Lightyear as well. Isaac decided they were blankies, even unsewn..so, I ran out and got backings and sewed them while he was hovering over me. He grabbed the Cars one even before I could trim the ends of the thread. Here’s the resulting evening…

(and Yes, Maryanne, that is the Spongebob pillowcase I got at Kmart for the boy…it’s cute, isn’t it?)

Ok..if you’ve made it this far, I salute you. This was a LOT longer than I had planned. Man. that’ll teach me to take a blog break!

So, here’s hoping your 2008 has started off nicely!!