Merry (Belated) Christmas

I wanted to post sooner- if for no other reason than to bury the post beneath this- but life has been a bit hectic lately. Mark and I and the kids celebrated Christmas early this year and three days later we left for Michigan to spend the holidays with family.

The kids had a lot of fun opening presents (I know, it’s crazy… who knew?) and were happy with everything that Santa Claus brought them. I think they were only being polite because Santa Claus brought them educational toys, books, and underwear (geez, Santa’s such a downer), but fortunately Mark and I came through with video games, remote controlled airplanes, a wooden train track, Play-Doh, and Airsoft guns (something I bought for them in a moment of weakness, forgetting the time my dad was young and aimed a BB gun at my aunt’s foot and told her to dance… she wasn’t quick enough and he shot her point blank in the foot) (I give Gage and Carter six months before one of them pulls the same stunt).

Carter has wanted an Air Hog remote controlled helicopter forever (translation: six months), so Mark and I finally (I have no idea where Carter has inherited his dramatic personality… heh) bought him one… his Havoc Heli is easily his favorite present and even though he had a hard time in the beginning (Macy still hasn’t come out from underneath our bed), he’s gotten a lot better and can now fly his helicopter through the house and land on the ceiling fan. We also bought him Guitar Hero so let me know if you’d like tickets when Aerosmith kicks off their next tour (he’ll be the one in the back telling the groupies to stop calling him and trying to give Steven Tyler a wedgie)… I have connections.

Gage wanted to be an only child for Christmas, but that ship has sailed so he had no other choice than to settle for Spore (a computer game) and Brisingr (the third and final book in the Inheritance trilogy. I buy each of the boys at least one book every year for Christmas because I’m hoping to pass on my love of reading to at least one of my kids, if not all three… it would be nice if they would inherit something of myself other than my height and biting sarcasm)… Gage loves to read (score!) so he finished reading the book before we pulled into the driveway after driving home from Michigan.

Ryerson has wanted everything he’s seen on tv for the past three months (seriously, Ryerson… the Sham Wow?) but Mark and I needed to draw the line somewhere so we went with the Leapster thinking he would love being able to play something along the lines of the Nintendo DS but age appropriate. It isn’t that he doesn’t have fun playing Go, Diego, Go: Animal Rescue and Finding Nemo, but I think he’s more impressed with the $4 tube of Play-Doh that I bought as an afterthought as opposed to the $60 educational video game system I searched one month and two stores to find.

Mark and I wanted the kids to have a few days to play with their new toys before we left to drive to Michigan, so we left early Tuesday morning. I had thought Mark and I had an understanding that if driving conditions looked to be at all life threatening, we wouldn’t leave until Wednesday morning. Apparently deals were made to be broken and what is usually a 7 1/2-8 hour drive took us 12 hours (yes, count them… TWELVE) (I’m very bitter… nearly losing my life in a head on collision tends to make me irritable). You would have thought that seeing as we were driving in freezing rain before we even made it out of town would have made Mark stop and think, “Hmmm… maybe we shouldn’t leave today”, but he insisted that it wouldn’t last long.

I’m not normally one to pass up the opportunity to say “I told you so”, but I managed to restrain myself only because Mark was feeling guilty enough as it was without me saying “I told you so” every time we passed some poor sucker in a ditch (instead I suggested to Mark that we count the number of times we used the anti-lock brake system to pass the time- ya’ know… FOR FUN- and wondered out loud if I was going to be banned at the gates of Heaven for the time I closed the door in the face of a Jehovah’s Witness), and I like to think I’m a good person.

I’m not sure it was worth risking our lives for, but we did have a great time in Michigan. It had snowed a lot the week before so the kids were able to play in “real” snow (as opposed the “fake” snow in Kentucky) and as much as I hate the snow, it was great watching them make a snow fort and being able to make a decent snowball without having to scrape off a layer of ice first. We spent Christmas Eve with Mark’s family playing games and taking bets on whether or not Rick would fall asleep (Rick is Mark’s brother and has spent a lot of time behind a snowplow lately). The kids were thrilled to finally see their cousins Jordan, Torie, and Jakob, and we were able to see family we hadn’t seen in a long time (hi, Aunt Karen… your Strawberry Pecan Salad was just as good as I remembered). We went to my dad and stepmom’s house on Christmas day and the kids spent the afternoon sledding… Gage and Carter lasted for quite a while but Ryerson only lasted fifteen minutes until he lost his boot in the snow (he wasn’t nearly as impressed with snow after that). They spent the night that night and had fun playing in the hot tub and peeing in the snow (something Grandpa always lets them do when I’m not around). Friday we spent the afternoon with my mom and her fiancee opening presents and making wedding plans (I have a feeling she’s going to make me wear something fuschia and covered in bows just to pay me back for all the times I snuck out of the house when I was in high school).

In spite of the wonderful time, it’s good to be home… we came home after spending a week in Michigan and we haven’t done much of anything since then. As much as I love the holidays, I wish Mark and I would have taken the season into consideration when planning our wedding… our anniversary was December 30th, but the two of us were too exhausted to celebrate. We had talked about hiring a babysitter and going out to dinner, but because of everything going on, neither one of us remembered to call our neighbor to babysit. Mark has been nothing but a fantastic husband and father and deserves more than a Marie Callendar’s chicken pot pie and two prerecorded episodes of the television series’ Fringe to commemorate the day we were married thirteen years ago, so this weekend I’m going to make it up to him by serving him a romantic dinner by candlelight and wrapping myself up with a bow and some glitter.

Because I’m a good wife. Wink.