Christmas Chaos 2009

Four Christmases in twenty-four hours.  Only ours went a whole lot smoother than the movie Four Christmases, Thank God.


Christmas #1: Christmas Eve
Our Christmas Chaos started Christmas Eve at Grandma Mary's house, which was, as usual, standing room only.  The key is to arrive early enough for butt space.  Christmas Eve is where having kids really pays off, because the kids can step and fetch while you protect your butt space.  If you arrive too late, you're screwed, you've got to find some place to stand and that just sucks.





Of course, the Chaos was controlled by my friend Amanda, who provided us with a good sized bottle of Apple Pie Hooch.  No shot glasses were to be found, but, hell, we're all family, we'll just share the bottle...





Sure beats the time, a few years ago, when we had a bottle of wine, but no corkscrew.  Being the inventive family we are, we drilled (yes, power tools were involved) a screw down into the synthetic cork and used the claw end of a hammer to pry the cork out.  We don't need no stinkin' corkscrew!


Christmas #2: At Home

We woke up bright an early on Christmas Morning.  Well, actually RCC and I were woken up early by Digger, who is well known for his sleeping in ability.  Color me surprised that he woke us up at ten 'til seven, ten whole minutes before our alarm was set to go off.  He was like, well, a kid on Christmas Morning.  In no time at all, he'd roused the entire house and we tore into presents.  We didn't get a tree up this year, which I didn't think would bother me because we went so many years without a tree, but after our amazing tree last year, I'm kinda sad we didn't do one this year.

Christmas #3: Off to the In-Laws

After our early morning, present fest, we loaded up both cars with the kids and the dog and off we went to RCC's parents for Christmas Morning with them.  Unlike last year, when his little brother was still asleep when we got there (what kid can sleep in on Christmas Morning?), Dallan was up and frothing at the bit to get started.  Christmas at RCC's family's house is much more sedate than the free-for-all that occurs at my grandma's on Christmas Eve.  But, Lord, my family is so enormous that if we did the one person open one present thing there we'd be opening presents until New Year's.

Christmas #4: To the Mountains We Go
After RCC's family's house, we packed up and headed to my parents' place in Allenspark.  My brother, Deejo and his family, had arrived from Arizona too late to enjoy the fun at Grandma Mary's, but were waiting for us at Mom's.  Well, sort of waiting for us.  They'd done the present thing before breakfast brunch, which we missed while we were at RCC's parents' place.  I was kind of sad and pissy that we missed the major opening party, but felt better when I found out that not everybody had opened their gifts.  I was anxious to see their faces when they opened their gifts from us.  RCC and I had bound our NaNo projects on Blurb for Christmas presents and I wanted to see their faces when they opened them.  RCC's parents loved them and I was hoping to get to see my Mom's face when she opened her present.  I got lucky, she'd been too busy preparing brunch to open her presents, so I still got to be there when she opened them.

It made me happy to see her so excited about the books, even if they're nowhere near being complete.  Monster and Deejo's kids tried snowboarding out back, but that didn't go so well.  The snow was too deep and they had to shovel out a path for the snowboard.

After the non-success of the snowboard, Monster, who cannot sit still, managed to talk his uncle into pulling him behind the car on a snow saucer.  Yes, I know, it's kind of illegal.  But it's also a whole ton of fun.  And we survived when we were kids.  He had a couple of colossal wipe-outs, but managed to survive with all of his fingers and toes and no broken bones.  I gotta tell you, this kid can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.





We survived all of our Christmases and slept 'til 11:00 this morning.  Wow.  All that running around must have really taken it out of us, but I'm glad to have this running around to do.  I remember some pretty sucky Christmases, so I'll take the exhaustion of running all over God's green earth over some of our other Christmases.