Christmas Amusings and cat scratch fever...

There seems to be a direct correlation between the amount of cookies that Santa consumed and the tightness in the seat of my pants. mmmm...not sure WHY that would be.

Yesterday was a combination of delightful moments and exercises in excess. BOY woke up first, but at a very reasonable hour of 7am. We slept in! He was ready to go see if Santa had really come. I guess there was some doubt that all of this magic was really possible. We woke up GIRL and all went into the living room together. There was a moment of silence and then the kids flung themselves upon their gifts from Santa. But the biggest shriek came from BOY who discovered that "SANTA ATE ALL THE COOKIES AND DRANK ALL HIS MILK!" And Santa had left a note:

Dear BOY & GIRL,
Thank you for the cookies & milk and the reindeer food.
Love - Santa
[That Santa really has a way with words.]

E and I had kept the Christmas gifts from us to a minimum, feeling that a simple Christmas is a more enjoyable one. BUT... still being relatively new to the job as parents we had not taken into consideration the gifts from everyone else. And it was clearly A LOT. There were toys. Everywhere. And a cacophony of sound between motorized vehicles and a life-like cat that kept meowing. (A present for GIRL, it kept them both delighted for hours.) OOHHH the bounty. The living room looked like an explosion at a paper factory. And it took about 6 hours (not really exaggerating) to finish opening the gifts. When 11ish rolled around and we were still a la PJs and had not had nourishment of any kind - except chocolate from our stockings, E and I decided it was time to finish it up.

After getting a 2ND wind, we took the kids to a local canyon and went for a hike. On the way BOY was a bit concerned about us running into "cannon balls" in the canyon. It took a bit of discourse back and forth to explain the differences between "cannon" and "canyon." It was a glorious Southern California day and we felt if not invigorated, less claustrophobic after getting some fresh air and exercise.

Then my brother, Uncle D, popped in for a few hours and was a delightful diversion for BOY & GIRL who had by this time worn-out their parents. He entertained us all by reading aloud from "Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition" - an absolutely hysterical, witty parody that leaves no country unscathed. And doing impressions of Chucky "Hi, I'm Chucky. Wanna play?" with the life-like, much coveted, stuffed animal cat.

The culmination of my brother's visit came when he had to climb a 2 story ladder to rescue a cat out of a palm tree. Yes, it is true. I am pet sitting for a friend's cat and fish. Up until yesterday I was more concerned about killing the fish while they are gone. [It's a known fact that fish die whenever the owner goes out of town.] Oh, no. Not anymore. I gave the cat a near death experience yesterday. I had the brilliant idea of walking our dogs over to the house and someone, who shall remain nameless (not my brother), had the equally brilliant idea of letting one of our dogs loose. Well, the dog chased the cat and the cat flew up a palm tree. This called for drastic measures... First we left the ladder propped up against the tree, hoping that the cat would come down on her own. Poor Kitty, 2 hours later, was still up the tree and wrapped around the inner fronds. My brother, MY HERO, scaled the ladder and rescued her. Nary a scratch. When handed off to me, she put in a good claw to my neck. She now hates me. I figure I deserved it. E seems to think that there's a chance that I'll come down with cat scratch fever. And here I thought it was just a song... Personally, I'm not worried, it might be a pleasant diversion from job hunting.

We ended the evening at E's brother's house where we had a delicious dinner, fabulous company and conversation, and the kids managed to be quite civilized (other than a few well flung "POOP" phrases at dinner) considering all the stimulation and sugar consumed that day. We placed BOY & GIRL in their PJs for the ride home, and they fell asleep before we rolled into the driveway. By cover of darkness, we dragged all of the recycle bins, overflowing boxes and shredded wrapping paper down to the street. If I'm going to be embarrassed about the excess, I might as well feel good about recycling. Then E and I sat together in the living room with the soft lights of the Christmas tree. Indeed, a Christmas to remember...

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