Dear Mr. Grinch:

 You’ve been misunderstood, I think. Plenty of us hate Christmas. I mean really, it’s enough already with the trees and the lights and the gifts, the gift returns. I would like to personally extend an invitation to you to come to my house for dinner. Yeah, yeah, I know, another party. Another shin-dig git-together. It’s enough already. You don’t have to bring a gift. I won’t bring one for you. I WILL make your favorite roast beast. You can have the whole thing to yourself. I’ll make another one for your dog too, only don’t feel you have to rig him up to your sleigh. I’ll send a car (ok…so admittedly I have no idea how to “send a car,” but I’ll look into it. I can always send my Dad. He has a very nice car and he’s retired now so I think he’d be cool with it). Make it any day you want. Look in your book, your palm pilot, your blackberry, whatever you do, just let me know.

I promise we won’t sing songs or count our blessings. It’ll be your show. My only request, and I think it’s really up your alley, is please, please, PLEASE, will you bring your giant sack and pack up all of my Christmas decorations. Just really, all of it. Pack it up, get it out of here. I just…I just can’t stand doing it myself.

Thanks,

Robin

Merry post Christmas y’all. All is well with our household. New Webkinz have been adopted, we have remote control cars, Death Star transformers, new clothes. Also, it appears that my answer to the Great Butterscotch Debacle seems to have worked. My daughter has accepted the non-robotic stuffed horse into the pack and all is right with the world.

 Oh…except we all have raging colds. It started with my son on Friday and has now pollinated everyone. We spent the afternoon at the doctor’s office (oh…and on the off chance anyone in that waiting room is reading this…so sorry :). Apparently, listening to the noises made by the Death Star transformer and Puppy Grow over and over again is not charming to anyone (who knew). So anyway…over the last few days I got to thinking. I’ve come up with my billion dollar idea. We have to figure out how to run cars on boogers. Seriously.  I know all the mom’s out there can back me up on this one. It’s an infinite supply! I could probably run our van on my kids alone. We just have to come up with a name for it. Boogoline? Mucousoline? Sneezel Fuel? (ok, that last one was bad…the rest were brilliant though

Ugh.

Ok, I stole this idea from LPC. I’m stuck in the 4th grade. Which…is probably just about right.

This is, apparently, MY blog’s readability level.

I think maybe it’s my overuse of elipses…And. Incomplete. Sentences.

Ok, this made me laugh so much I spit coffee out of my nose. (Which was funny because I was drinking water.)

Anyway.

I’ve been playing around with our new camera and took some videos of the kids with Santa Claus. I then decided to go crazy with Windows MovieMaker. THEN I went really crazy and opened up another YouTube account so my family could see my handiwork. (and I eventually may start doing some vlogs here).

Anyway.

YouTube sent me a warm and fuzzy holiday cyber-hug in the form of the following:

 Ouch. Merry Christmas! ! I have 0 friends, favorites and YouTube thinks I’m a user.  Man…I could have saved so much money on Christmas presents. See now, I actually kind of think I’m a caring nurturer. Aaaaaah. Too funny.

Anyway.

I will probably be on bloggy hiatus until Dec. 26th (unless I can come up with the time and a topic…it could happen, so in that case, disregard). Happy holidays to you and yours.

Robin

Just a quickie blog here, X-mas craziness in full swing!

I got treated to a wonderful (and unexpected) holiday moment today. I volunteered at the kids’ school and got to sit in on the BHS Symphonic Band concert. They were fantastic and conductor Ron Koch did such a great job putting on a show for the little ones. The elementary kids were riveted. He talked about each section of the band so the kids would know a woodwind from a percussion instrument etc. My son’s hands down favorite was when the Tuba players did the famous rift from Darth Vader’s Theme. All the little boys screamed in unison and pretended they had light sabers for about 30 seconds afterwards.

I gotta admit, it made me a little weepy (though I kept telling people it was my sinuses!). Back in the day, I was a clarinet player in Symphoic Band under Mr. Tolly. Good memories and the kids (both the audience and the performers) did Bedford proud today. I wish I had pictures but I didn’t realize in advance I’d be going to it.

Holy mackerel it’s cold out there!

We’ve been busy trying to squeeze out all of the X-mas fun we can around here.

First, there was the zoo. Frankly, I think it’s one of THEE best family-oriented X-mas events this area has to offer (and wait a minute…family-oriented and X-mas event must be mutually exclusive…I would hope).

The back story is my daughter is usually afraid of Santa. Well, not so much afraid, but she’s never been down with sitting on the lap of a stranger in a red suit.

But…her quandary this year is her desire to get Butterscotch. Butterscotch is a Fur Real Friends, robotic horse. It’s about as tall as her five year old self and retails for about $250.00 ($200 at Costco…if you can even find it). Bottom line…it’s not happening. I think we’re heading for her “A Christmas Story” moment. It is her Red Rider be-be gun, that horse. Again. Not. Happening. She tried though. In the car on the way to the zoo I talked her down and convinced her she should ask for a horse “like” Butterscotch. Ergo, I schlepped to two Toys-R-Us’ today to get her a 40 inch plush horse that is “similar” to Butterscotch without the (IMHO) creepy animatronics or the price tag. I am secure in my belief that she will like it just as much. I am also certain that she will let me know if she doesn’t.

And…lest anyone think we are all about the commercial aspect of X-mas. We spent our blustery afternoon doing one of the other best X-mas themed events in our area. The Mt. Carmel living nativity. Do go see it if you get the chance. The animals are adorable. We heard the real Christmas story from Mary herself with Father Dan Nicholas looking on. The kids made ornaments with their near-frozen fingers and had a really wonderful time. Those guys are Christmas heroes for  braving the elements and are much appreciated!

And I’m sooo not kidding about this horse situation. Here’s my daughter after she scaled the nativity wall. They were so sweet to let her, but man, there was a PONY in there. She had to go kiss it!

Ok, I have the dubious honor of having been voted Class Klutz during my senior year in High School. It’s a long story, but the short of it was a very humiliating performance with a jump rope during Sophomore year So-Jr-Sr relays. It wasn’t pretty. The pressure got to me. I was sixteen.

Well, now…ugh…I earned my “crown” yet again. I knew there was ice on the driveway. I saw the ice on the driveway. I had just got done warning my kids about the ice in the driveway. Down I went, anyway. I’m not exactly hurt, but falling on your doopa (it’s polish, google it )when you’re sixteen is one thing. When you’re over 35, um, it’s a “whole nutha.” I was fine yesteray, now my whole left side feels like one giant charlie horse.

Not that I would wish an injury upon myself, but for once, I’d like to be doing something heroic. “I was saving a boxful of puppies from a burning building when I tripped over a falling, flaming beam.” “I threw myself on a grenade to save Brad Pitt and Apolo Ohno.”

No, for me it’s always: Well, I was stepping off my porch…I was opening the car door…I was walking around a big couch…There was this piece of paper, it was very pointy.

But…I have motrin. Lots and lots of motrin.

I probably risk alienating some friends by talking about this. But, in the long run, I think it’s worth it. I think we’ve all been there. You make a friend, or you have a friend. A friend from work, a cousin, someone you’ve known since High School. You talk, you laugh. You go out, you exchange Christmas cards, whatever the relationship. You think you know that person. You think you can rely on that person, tell your secrets to them.

 Then it happens. They do that thing that we all hate. And…I realy think we ALL hate it, at least on some level.

They start sending you forwarded emails. Maybe just one or two at first. Maybe they even preface the emails with something like, “You know I never forward this stuff, but I knew you’d think this was funny.” So, that first time, you read it. It’s some kind of angel prayer, or maybe it’s a joke about how men can’t handle anything. You chuckle, but in your heart, the seed of doubt has been planted.

Then, a day or two later, they maybe forward something else. They make another excuse. The forwarded message is just not dang funny.

Usually by the 3rd or 4th time, you know your “friend” has a problem. Your getting all sorts of random crud. If you don’t forward this, some little boy in Darfur is going to starve, you’ll break his spirit, keep this chain going or no other miracles will ever happen… They are specific to our professions as well. I can tell all of my friends now, I have GOTTEN the one with all of the actual quotes from court trials (Q: Mr./Dr. Coroner, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people? A: Um…all my autopsies have been on dead people). Seriously, it was chuckle-worthy, but I’m good now, thanks.

At any rate, you can safely classify your friend as one of “those” people. Again, I know you all know who I mean. You might even be one of them. An email forwarder. You hate to do it, but after about the 15th email in about 4 days, you’ve got a decision to make. Do you spam block them or do you just manually delete anything that comes from this person. Frankly, I choose to manually delete. Somehow, spam blocking seems so cold. They are still, after all, my friend. What if something major happened and they sent me an email about it.  Of course, if they were REALLLY close friends, they’d pick up a phone and call me about it.

Do you think A & E could do an Intervention episode about email forwarders?

“The only reason I’m doing this is for my children to see that Mommy was a pop star.”

             - Posh Spice, in an interview to Entertainment Weekly.

 Uh…yeah. I say that all the time. Just said it two minutes ago to my five year old, as a matter of fact. Which leads me to today’s topic….Sentences I never thought I’d utter, let alone mean.

1.)     “Quit eating that Halloween candy, we’re on our way to McDonald’s!”

2.)    “Hey, quit whipping that snake around!” (My son got a cheap plastic snake from the Dollar store and he’s been using it like bull whip, usually within two inches of his sister’s head)

3.)  “Would you just sit still and eat your spaghetti sandwich the regular way, with two hands?” (What can I say, putting said spaghetti between two slices of bread was the only way I could get my son to eat it the other night. Ya do what ya gotta do. Besides, how would YOU eat it?)

4.)   Get baby Jesus out of your mouth!

That’s just this week. Hmmm, I’d love to hear yours (and Posh’s).

Robin

Ok, so last year I had Xmas card karma. One night I hosed the kids off put them in new jammies and stuck them under the tree. I got this pretty-close-to-perfect photo and it went out all over the land.

 This year…not so much so far.

I kept telling them to smile naturally. Apparently, smile naturally to them means, move your head around, grab at your sister, do a cartwheel or make a face like you’re trying to levitate the couch with your thoughts. There is one. I didn’t post it because it may end up being The One and I wouldn’t want to spoil it for the tens of relatives and friends that are waiting by their mailbox as we speak.

If all else fails, I could use these.

Whatdya think? I enrolled both of ‘em in the Identa-kid program and this is what they produced on their ID cards. I just wanna know what THEE hell the Identa-kid photographer said to them before he snapped the shutter!!!! “I killed your puppy!” Or, maybe they gave ‘em a pot of coffee and made them hold their water. I don’t know!!!!