Storing Christmas

Today was a lovely, sunny day in the seventies, and we took advantage of it by taking down all the Christmas lights, inside and outside, and putting them away in the attic.  I think the real dividing line between childhood and adulthood is the point at which you stop being sorry to see all the Christmas paraphernalia put away.  My parents used to have to put all the decorations away while I was at school because I'd whine too much about saying goodbye to it all.  Now I look forward to having it all put away.  Not the actual process of putting it away, you understand -- that's always a hassle -- but having it all out of the way and realizing I don't have to mess with it again for another eleven months.

The penultimate post

Because we've been up past midnight every night this week watching old TV shows on Roku, I have two blogs left to go in one day.  I have been eagerly awaiting the finish line of this resolution and still haven't decided what, if any, blogging resolution to make for 2012.  It won't be five days a week, though; that's for certain!  My life simply isn't interesting enough for that.

Christmas debriefing, part the second

The kids had a great Christmas, as well.  They got stuffed toys (Nemo for Eric and Finn McMissile for Faith) and glowing plastic light sabers.  Faith got a plush Rapunzel doll and a Maximus with brushable, styleable mane, and Eric got extra track and a new covered bridge and windmill for his wooden train set....

They both got new clothes, which I wouldn't have been excited about at all at their age, but they really enjoy getting....

But the biggest hits came from grandparents this year.  My parents got them a pair of walkie-talkies (Lightning McQueen for Eric and Finn McMissile for Faith) that they have a grand time calling each other on, and their Grandma Pattie gave them "learning laptops" with educational games which they are really enjoying playing.

Christmas photo

Christmas debriefing, part the first

Had a very nice Christmas.  Got a Kindle and jewelry and season 6 of "Doctor Who" and a stack of books.  Better yet, I made coconut cream pie for the first time, and it turned out delicious.  Got Tommy a new Bible (pages are falling out of his old one) and a Roku that I had to upgrade our wireless router for, but we've been enjoying watching our Amazon Prime Instant Videos on the actual TV from the couch instead of hovering around a 17-inch monitor.

Merry Christmas!

Kaleidoscope Christmas Card

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The most amazing holiday lights display I've ever seen in person

This house is in a neighborhood about five minutes from our own, where Tommy delivers packages. He says they started installing lights around Halloween. We went by to see the finished product last week and were utterly blown away. This is just one of about a half a dozen songs to which the lights are choreographed. You can hear the music softly from the house itself, and they provide a radio station to tune to in your car to hear it simultaneously at your choice of volume. I feel like we ought to send this family a thank-you note for their beautiful gift to everyone. The sign in their yard said they had won their neighborhood holiday display contest. You think?!

I knew there was a reason I got the 17-inch widescreen laptop...

...it's just the right size to be a cat bed.

World's worst stocking stuffer

Found this in my e-mail inbox today.

...even leaving aside the fact that it's too late to get this by Christmas Eve.

Me, I want a hula hoop

If only one good thing came out of the existence of "Alvin and the Chipmunks 3: Chipwrecked" (and I'm fairly certain that one is the upper numeric limit for which it can claim credit), it's that "A Chipmunk Christmas" was dug out of mothballs and aired tonight on ABC, in all its Chuck Jones-animated glory.  I especially enjoy that Alvin looks like a tan Grinch on the top of Mount Crumpet when he unwraps the harmonica and Tommy's older sister looks like a grown-up Cindy Lou Who.  (A throwaway little girl in the Alvin-dresses-as-Santa sequence is actually named 'Cindy Lou.')

"Huh?" moment of the day

I learned from the Parade magazine in the Sunday paper that Jami Gertz was 2011's most philanthropic celebrity.  Apparently, she and her husband gave away $10,569,000.  And I'm left wondering where the heck Jami Gertz got ten million dollars to give away.  Has she even done anything since "The Lost Boys?"

(And as I read her IMDB page, I see she's had several TV roles in the intervening years.  I haven't heard of her since "The Lost Boys.")

Happy Meals, or The Irony of Do-Goodism

So, Happy Meals.  I have been a connoisseuse thereof twice in my life, once when I was eating them and now again that I'm buying them for my kids.  (The toys are way better now, by the way.  McDonald's was still producing their own when I was in the target demographic; now they're licensed by different toy, movie and TV companies.  See below Faith's My Little Ponies, each of which was a free toy in a Happy Meal box.)

McDonald's has been under fire, however, for the epidemic of overweight children, so they recently introduced a new healthier Happy Meal.  One used to have a choice of either apple slices or fries as a side item, but the meddlesome forces of good felt that too few parents ordered the apples.  Now there is no more option: each Happy Meal comes with a smaller bag of apples in addition to fries.

The net result for my family is that the new healthier Happy Meal is actually less healthy.  I always used to order apple slices with the kids' McNuggets.  Now, I get two bags of fries and fewer apples with our meals, when I used to get more fruit and no fries.  Way to go, Helen Lovejoys of the world.  Job well done.

A right jolly young elf

Eric made himself a starter Santa beard with bubbles in the bath tonight.

A walk down Christmas Memory Lane

I had all of these but the Supersoaker; it was a little after my time.

Christmas cookies

We got a big Christmas box from here from my brother-in-law's family on Friday: a four-box tower of brownies and cookies.  (Hey! It was food; we had to open it before Christmas.  At least half of it is gone already.  Thanks, Less and Pam!

Seasonal thoughts

Today I asked Eric if he could name the four seasons.  "Spring," he began.  "Fall.  Winter."  He paused to think a moment.  "And cloudy."

A picture is worth at least one blog post.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

Early this afternoon, I had a really decent idea of something I could blog about today.  Only now that I'm actually sitting down to a blank screen, I can't for the life of me remember what it was.  This resolution will kill me yet, with less than a month to go.  Must remember to jot down a note next time I think of something to type, or I won't remember it when I'm tired and desperate.

Y.M.C.A.

Today (well, yesterday now) was our last day of swim lessons for 2011.  Normally they'd start up again in January, but the kids are doing basketball in January and February and then we're planning to take a vacation in the spring.  It might be almost summer before we get back to it again.  I hope Eric doesn't entirely forget anything  he's learned in his twelve weeks of lessons -- not a lot, really, other than a familiarity with the water and not being afraid to jump in without holding his teacher's hands.  It'll be nice to take a break from the twice-weekly drive to and from the Y, although by the time I sign them up for lessons again, I'll probably be looking forward to the 45-minute reading break I get while one of them is swimming.

Complaints

It's Monday, and I'm already a day behind on blogging because I didn't post over the weekend to make up for missing a day last week.  Christmas is rapidly approaching, I have presents to buy and cards to send, and this is the last week of swim lessons and Zoo Academy before the holidays.  It's cold and wet and windy, and I have to get out the glue gun and fix the wreath that was stored upright in its box rather than flat so that decorations have fallen off.  Also, have misplaced the box of Christmas books and the toy nativity scene for the kids, which means I have to go back up in the attic and look for it in the aforementioned cold, wet, windy weather.  Remembered to order Christmas stamps so I wouldn't have to go to the post office, but forgot to also order the 20-cent stamps that my cards will need extra because they're a non-standard five-inch-square envelope so I'm still going to have to go to the post office.  Yay for Yuletide cheer!

The periodical table

During Tommy's two weeks off at Thanksgiving, we actually put the kids to bed early one night and made a little incursion into the spare room.  You can kind of walk in there now.  Anyway, of all the things I didn't need to find in there, I ran across a stack of five or six magazines from summer 2010 that I never read.  I sighed but dutifully put them into my big tote bag o' periodicals with all the magazines I've been trying to catch up on since last April.

This morning was my second-to-last Friday morning sitting in McDonald's for three hours while Faith is at Zoo Academy, but since I felt a lot less guilty about merely skimming through 18-month-old magazines than the fresh new ones, I am now down to three magazines to read before my bag is empty.  Granted, a couple of them are fairly thick, as they're the quarterly sort (and one is a special Winter/Spring double edition), but unless I get a whole new slew of them in the mail this week (and most of what I'm getting in the mail now is holiday catalogs), there is a definite light at the end of the tunnel.  I might actually get to read some of the books I got for last Christmas by this Christmas.

Why, Jiminy, what big ... everything you have!

This is apparently the largest known insect in the world, with a seven-inch wingspan.  It is only found on a small island off New Zealand.  Oddly enough, it's kind of cute.  Maybe it's the way it's sitting up on its hind legs and eating a carrot like a bunny with an exoskeleton.

Yup, not near as cute down on all sixes.  Ew.