Stop with the video!

So here's Jack and Neil forced to say nice things to relatives.  Actually, they love their relatives, they HATE being forced on video...

And after Jack trips on the skim board, you can make out crying in the background. He hurt his knee, but Mom knew she wouldn't get them to do the video again so she ignored her injured child. He has ice on it now...

Silent Night by Neil

Jack and Neil were going to say something for their relatives in Atlanta, but then Neil broke into a very stylized version of Silent Night. My apologies I didn't have the camera going when he started.

Sing on little man

So be prepared. I'm uploading video. This one is of Neil singing "I'm gettin' 'Nuttin for Christmas." Thank you kindergarten program. I cannot get this out of my head.

Sometimes you get it right

Christmas did come and it was good. We had a great time Christmas Eve at Marna's and Pa's house. The boys were spoiled rotten and the grandparents loved the numerous framed photo collages of our children that they received as gifts. They are good sports that way.

The best part may have been making my mother cry (in a good way. not the usual way...). We did it by accident.

It started with one brother who did not get our mother a gift so he called another brother to bail him out. The second brother called his sister (me) to complain about it... and that's when I remembered that I did the purchasing for Christmas last year for Brother No. 1. And I think I didn't buy the right thing so I tell Brother No. 2 what I think I should have bought.

He thinks it's  a great idea and heads to the mall. Through multiple phone conversations, phone photos and internet searches, we manage to find a cross necklace much like the one my mom had years ago that she lost (and was heartbroken over). We all pitched in and a great present was purchased -- on Christmas Eve even.

Our mom opened it and started to cry, "It's my cross..."

That's when we all started blubbering. Not a dry eye in the house, as they say...

Merry Christmas

We've just spent the last 2 hours wrapping furiously. Santa has a procrastination issue. He's in therapy for that.

We wrapped the gifts from us. We wrapped the gifts from the dogs. We wrapped gifts to the dogs (I apologize to the cat people I mocked previously). We wrapped gifts from Santa (in special paper with special bows and special tags. We are thorough.)

While I have several nasty paper cuts and there was an incident with the new-fangled paper cutter, I'm giddy. Santa came tonight and Christmas comes tomorrow!

Stop the kissing

Jack: "Mom, what's mistletoe?"

Me: "It's a plant. At Christmas time you hang some and if you are caught under the mistletoe, you get a kiss."

I attempt to kiss him, but he artfully dodges it.

Jack: "I've got to warn Neil."

Christmas is coming ...

Good Morning! 5 days and counting till Christmas.... I woke up yesterday with a cold, and then almost no voice this morning after last night's football game. Yahoo. This is going well.

Have I done any Christmas shopping? A little. When did I think I would finish? 

Have I made Christmas cookies? A few, but they have been eaten.

Have I cleaned up the house? Clearly not.

Have I made those handmade ornaments? Yeah. Not gonna happen.

Have I wrapped anything? Mailed Christmas cards? Shopped for Christmas dinner? Taken the kids to look at lights? Visited Santa?

Have I knitted myself a new scarf? Seriously, I just made that up. But I'm cranky and beating myself up.

I'm going to forage my way through the kitchen, tossing debris and cleaning up what's been piled up then I'm gonna mess it up again with freshly baked goods. Then I'll probably collapse on the couch and I will be exactly where I started (but I'll have cookies so that's a step forward).

Shout out for Comet

Neil loves Comet. You know, the reindeer.

He cheers when he hears Comet's name at the beginning of the song "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer."

Of course by the end of that song, he's complaining that Rudolph gets all the credit. Why isn't there a Comet song? Where's Comet's song? He does a good job too.

I can't tell you how many times I have had to listen to Neil's version of Comet the Red Nosed Reindeer...

True tales of trees past

Oh, Christmas tree how I love you. How I’m willing to torture family members to get you...
This year was no different (This post is for you Ken)...

We finally made it to the lot on Sunday. I was feeling antsy. I need a tree. I need a good tree, a perfectly shaped tree, one that is about 7 feet 6 inches tall and about 5 to 6 feet wide at the bottom. I am specific in my tree needs. This is the maximum amount of Christmas tree I can fit into our living room. We’ve lived here almost 14 years and hard experience has brought me to this knowledge (and my husband tries desperately to keep me in line).

I have purchased a 14 footer and stuck it in the entrance way of the house -- the only place with a high enough ceiling once Dean removed the hanging light-- but the ornaments blow off every time you open the front door. And it wasn’t easy having to go through the kitchen every time you wanted to go to the living room. And when you sat on the couch you could only see just over half of the tree.

My mother refuses to shop for a tree with me. My brothers mock it. My friends tell stories of times they have been caught up in it.

The aforementioned Ken used to keep himself and his truck available when he knew we were tree shopping. It was just easier that way when he had to come rescue us and our tree. Ken has moved to Colorado so it takes a little more commitment on his part.

I have been offered 20 bucks and a tree to leave a tree lot. I know a good deal. I took it. That tree was a beautiful Scottish pine.

We’ve had Nordmam pines, Fraser firs, Grand firs, Noble firs, Monterey pines and the dependable Douglas fir.

There was the year I bought three trees. Dean returned the first one (yes, they will give you a refund). The second we gave to a friend. It was a beautifully shaped tree but too skinny. I thought I could live with it, but I couldn’t. I was miserable. When our friend Art told me he trimmed three inches from the top, I nearly cried. I’m still a little upset.

The year I was offered cash to leave a tree lot was the first year Dean (and Ken) went with me to get a tree. Poor man. He had no idea what he was getting into.

The tree was for my family’s home. I was just home from Prague. We got the cash and the tree and headed home. This was before they put the stand on the tree for you so my mom handed Dean the stand and wished him luck. She retreated to the kitchen.

My lazy brothers stood in the kitchen with my mother laughing. They knew what Dean must have just been through at the lot (looking at tree after tree after tree after tree in search of the perfect one). Being just a boyfriend, Dean was low man on the totem pole and my brothers were enjoying the torture.

When Dean asked for something to whittle the tree trunk down a little to fit it into the tree stand, my mother handed him a steak knife.

He gallantly worked at it for an hour or so before he got the tree in the stand and upright.

Meanwhile Ken had planted himself on the couch and my father was giving him beers. Lots of beers. Pretty soon my dad and Ken were laughing like old buddies, slapping each other on the back, and my dad had nicknamed Ken “Fast Kenny.” He promised him his own engraved mug and a permanent spot on the couch.

My dad kept saying,”Joi, I really like Fast Kenny. You should go out with him.”

Thanks Dad, but I think my boyfriend who is sitting on the floor whittling our Christmas tree with a steak knife might object.

Why did Dean not run away?

Our first Christmas tree as a married couple written up in the local paper.

We went to the local cut-down-your-tree lot. We wandered around this huge field of trees. It was like heaven. Tree after tree after tree available for inspection. I asked friends to stand in front of potential trees until I found the perfect one.

It was a beauty. Only thing was we didn’t really think about the size. We were young and in love. We had just gotten married and returned from a honeymoon in Italy. We weren’t seeing anything straight.

We cut down that tree and we lugged it to the booth to pay. And then when we went to put it on the car ...

We drove a Civic. We tossed that tree up there and that’s when we got an inkling of what was to come: the tree was longer than the car. It hung off the front. It hung off the back.

Hmmmm. Did this stop us? No. The Civic is a compact. How long could it really be? 9 feet?

We lugged the tree up a flight of stairs to our condo (thank you again Ken). We put it in a stand. It almost touched our 14 foot ceiling. Almost touched, no room for a star, but it made it into the house. Yahoo!

Then we started to cut the netting off...

Whoooooooooosh! The netting tore and the tree limbs sprang out. Tim swears a squirrel ran out.

The tree reached from one end of the 8 -foot sliding door to the other end. It was wall-to-wall tree in the living room. It was AWESOME.

And then it fell over.

Thank God there were no small children or animals around. They would have been crushed.

We tried another stand and another stand. Eventually, we nailed a stand to a giant piece of plywood and anchored the tree to the walls to keep it upright.

We decorated only the front of the tree. We couldn’t get around it, and truthfully, we couldn’t afford any more ornaments.

To get the ornaments at the top of the tree, Dean had to get on Ken’s shoulders. Apparently, a ladder wasn’t one of the wedding gifts.

Which brings me to this year: The boys really wanted to cut down their tree. So we carefully picked a tree, noting its height and width (I must stay it is almost exactly 7 foot 6 inches by 5 feet). Weren’t we smart?

Not so much. My husband who had surgery just a month ago starts sawing and sawing and sawing...

The kids and I try to help, but we can’t even get the saw to budge. Dean realizes he doesn’t want to include a trip to the ER with saw wounds so he takes over again.

He’s sawing and sawing. Are we sure the blade is even remotely sharp?

It’s dark by the time we decide to tackle the tree. Yes, tackle the tree.

Dean lined up and knocked it flat. Then Neil jumped on it. I had heart palpitations. Not because I thought they would get hurt, I just didn’t want the tree damaged.

We got it home without incident. Even got it standing in the living room with lights and ornaments and ribbon.

The tree is perfect. It smells fabulous. And the house feels like Christmas.

Oh Tannenbaum

We are finally getting a tree today! I hope anyway. This has been a slow-getting-started Christmas. Usually the house is completely decorated. The tree is up and shining beautifully, as well as taking up half the available space in the living room.

There's Christmas play practice today and a CIF championship football game to attend in San Jan Capistrano (Go Tartans!), but I think in between is tree-getting time... big, fat, green, Christmasy tree getting time.

Post mortem

So we're in recovery mode from Thanksgiving. The dinner itself turned out well considering that my mother and father managed to squash two major childhood beliefs in the first 15 minutes we were there.

Sweet Neil was showing Marna and Pa the space in his mouth where his tooth used to be. His first tooth and first experience with the tooth fairy -- he was quite excited.

That's when my mom launched into a story about my youngest brother (he's almost 14 years younger than I am)...

"Remember when you kids didn't think I would remember to put money under Brian's pillow when he lost his first tooth?"

I stared at her in stunned silence. My boys looked at me confused. I had to take action.

"You mean when you FORGOT that the tooth fairy would be coming and you thought you should do it?!" I said as I tried to casually kick her back into the present.

"What? No. Remember when you guys put money under Brian's pillow...."

"Mom. You MEAN when you were ADDING to what the tooth fairy brings," I said kicking her harder.

She stared at me. "OH. OH."

There's a moment of silence. I briefly think we are in the clear.

And then she says, "You kids never believed in the tooth fairy or Santa. Why should you?"

That's when my dad starts in on Santa. "There was no Santa when I was a kid. You got a flannel shirt and they told you to like it!"

Sweet Mercy. Are you kidding me?! 

One of the dogs ran outside and I sent the kids after him. "Stay out there."

Now, I didn't believe in the tooth fairy or in Santa. That was my parents' choice. It was not a tradition they were interested in or had time for, I suppose. In fact, my mother is quite proud of how I would tell all the neighbor kids how stupid they were for believing and how I would "set them straight." I'm sure I was very popular with kids and parents.

But my husband believed, and it was important to him that our children believe or at least have the chance to believe in magic and mystery and childhood things.

I have to say that one of my lifetime favorite moments was when Jack was 2 and came down the stairs on Christmas morning. He didn't see the tree or the mounds of gifts for him around it. All he saw was an empty plate and glass where the night before he had left cookies and milk for Santa. Jack couldn't contain himself. The joy was contagious. Santa had been there! It didn't matter what he had brought. It mattered that by magic he had come.

I tried gently to remind my mother and father that our children believe in Santa and the tooth fairy and that we expect them not to dispel these myths. Though it was a bit like closing the barn door after the horse was already loose.

"Why should they believe in Santa?!" my mother starts in again. "You kids never believed. Why should they?"

I can see my husband about to lose it. "Why shouldn't they?!" he asks my mother.

I think I'm thankful that my dad interrupts and starts in on "kids these days." He covers spoiled kids, loser kids, too many self-esteem movements and the drugs kids are on these days...

Forty-five minutes later my dad is still going, but we are coming full circle. The kids are outside playing. My parents have stopped talking about Santa and the tooth fairy. And I feel like I've been run over by a bus.

The kids haven't asked about the tooth fairy or Santa. We haven't brought it up. But I'm sure it's coming.

I don't have any idea what to do when it does...