Jingling All the Way...

This year's festivities followed a similar story to the previous year's.  And I think we look just as good!!  The pictures speak for themselves...

 

  

 

 

 

The night before was pretty fabulous as well...

 

 

And people wonder why I love the holidays so much!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

There are two things you may have learned about me by this point, 1-I LOVE Christmas and 2-I LOVE hanging out with my family.  This story is a perfect illustration of why these two things are true.

After four years of spending Christmas away from my family working in Colorado, December of 2007 I was finally home again.  However, things didn’t go quite as I had planned.  My mom informed me that we would be spending Christmas Day in Florida with my grandparents.  I was fine with that plan, and quite excited for the whole family to be together again, but I couldn’t help feeling sad that we wouldn’t have a white Christmas (I mean we went golfing on Xmas day…that’s just not right!).  So my mom promised that once we got back to New Hampshire we could have another Christmas; one complete with snow, a fire in the fireplace, and a few falls on the ice from Beano.

On the morning of December 28th, my mom and stepdad (Beano) were in the kitchen having breakfast when Beano asked, “Do we have to dress up for Christmas dinner tonight?”  My mom (for some unknown reason) was appalled by this, “Are you serious?  In the ten years we’ve had Christmas dinner together, have we ever ONCE had to dress up?!?”

“Ahh whatevah,” Beano grumbled.  Still upset by his absurdity, my mom went upstairs and burst in to my bedroom where my sister and I were sleeping.

“Guess what Beano just asked me!” she exclaimed, and proceeded to explain the whole incident.  To which I replied, “You mean dress up in costumes?”  Well that comment got us going back and forth about how funny it would be if we all dressed up in costumes and next thing you know we’ve come up with the most brilliant plan.  The three of us decided we would go to the Good Will and look for the most ridiculous ‘dress up’ outfits we could find and they would be the required attire for Christmas dinner that year.  We got my brother in on the plan as well. 

When it was time to eat, the four of us said, “OK Beano, we’re going to go get dressed up now.”  As we paraded up the stairs he stayed put in his chair saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”  He had no idea how pretty we were getting upstairs...

 Once we were as pretty as we could possibly get, we paraded back down to show off our threads.

"What the hell are you guys wearing?!?!" was his response.

"You said you wanted to dress up for dinner.  So we got out our prettiest outfits.  Don't worry, we have one for you too."

We all expected resistance from Beano, but he was surprisingly excited to wear his fancy new Christmas digs.

We actually had quite the photo shoot that night....

 

 

 

And I'm fairly certain we completely embarrassed the dog...

 

We actually wore the outfits all through dinner and then some...

 

 

Who knows what this year will bring.....

A Shot in the Dark

January of 2004 I had a minor surgery during my winter break from school.  Shortly after the surgery both my parents had to go out of town for a week for a sales meeting.  Since I hadn’t fully recovered, I asked my good friend Patrice to come stay with me just in case anything happened.

Unfortunately for Patrice, I was still pretty useless during her watch.  Still heavily medicated, I really didn’t do much other than nap and watch TV; which only last for about two hours before I’d nap again.  We attempted a trip to the mall once, but after only fifteen minutes in the first store I had to leave because I was too exhausted.

One night (when I finally made it past 8:00pm) we decided to watch Bad Boys II.  About halfway through the movie we heard a gunshot outside.  (If you recall from earlier posts, my parent’s house is surrounded by acres and acres of woods; which are often times full of hunters).  The sound of a gunshot is pretty unmistakable, and not usually a good sign. 

“What was that?” Patrice asked.
“I’m sure it was just a hunter.  We get a lot of those around here,” I calmly answered as if the hunters had ever been close enough to the house for us to hear their shots.  We both seemed content with my answer and went back to watching the movie.

(what I assume the hunters in our yard look like)

About thirty seconds later there was a second shot.  By this time logic had set in.

“Wait a second.  It’s nine o’clock at night.  It’s been dark for hours.  That CAN’T be a hunter!” I exclaimed.  Clearly the next logical explanation was a crazy serial killer (are there any that aren’t crazy?) 

There are all sorts of windows in my parents living room, one of them being about the size of the wall.  I kept getting flashes in my head of stray bullets from the serial killer’s gun flying through and shattering the massive window, landing somewhere in me or Patrice…or worse yet…Pippen.  We had to act fast!

(Large window, vulnerable to stray bullets)

I grabbed Pippen while shouting, “We have to get to an inner wall where the bullets can’t reach us!  I’ll grab the dog, you grab the phone!  The safest place for us is the hallway, out of sightline from the windows!”

Instead of calling 9-1-1, I first called my mom (if I had known Darren at the time, I probably would’ve called him too).  She said I needed to first calm down, if there was no imminent danger then we should call the non-emergency police number.  I didn’t know that number by heart.  We needed a phone book.  Patrice bravely volunteered to risk her life by walking in front of multiple windows to get the phone book out of the office.

I can’t recall why, but we decided Patrice would make the call.  Probably because she wasn’t the one crouched down in the inner hallway clutching the dog screaming about a serial killer outside.  She told the woman on the phone our location and that we heard gun shots and think there may be a situation. 

It turned out a car had hit a deer right in front of our house.  The deer was pretty badly injured so when the cops arrived they shot it to put it out of its misery.  (Apparently the cop wasn’t that great of a shot though if it took two bullets to kill the already hanging by a thread Bambi!)

We requested that if this happen again they call and at least let us know the reasoning behind the shots.  The lady on the phone apologized, saying she didn’t realize it would alarm any residents.  How foolish of us to react to the sound of a deadly weapon!

Between all the giggling that proceeded and the excitement of ‘cheating death’, I was too tired to watch the rest of the movie and went to bed.  I’m sure Patrice stayed up contemplating why it was she agreed to spend a whole week with me!

A Smashing Good Trick

On weekdays during my senior year of high school, bedtime was usually around 10:00pm.  One particular evening as the clock approached the 22nd hour, I found myself alone in my bedroom nowhere near ready to fall asleep.  Some people in this situation would read a book or watch TV to wind down.  Not me.  I used this extra energy to create an amazingly awesome trick.

For those of you that have never been to my childhood bedroom, it was very small.  I had a twin bed that was flush against the wall, bookshelves and a desk lining the other walls, and that’s about all that fit.

(This is not my actual bedroom. I couldn’t find a good picture to use but felt an image was necessary. I actually have no idea whose bedroom this is.)

The trick went as follows…

The bed was made.  I turned down the corner of the sheets that was closest to the wall.  I stepped back to the other side of the room (which was only about 6 feet).  Then I took a few quick steps.  Once I got right next to the bed I launched myself in to the air.  As I hovered above the bed I grabbed the turned down sheet corner and with cat-like speed I did a 180 turn; landing on my back, tucked in between the sheets.  Awesome.

I was so proud of myself for not only thinking up such a great trick but for also making it a reality.  And I was shockingly successful at sticking the landing.

After about 30 minutes of doing my trick over and over, my mom stopped by to say goodnight.

“Oh good!!  I was hoping you were coming up.  I have an awesome new trick to show you.  I’ve been practicing for like ever.  I’m really good at it now.”

Her mouth said, “A trick??” but her face said, “Oh great! What now?!?!”

Now that I had an audience my awesomeness was under a lot more pressure.  So when I ran, I ran a little harder.  When I launched myself in to the air, I launched a little harder.  And when I went to grab the sheets…BAM!!!

It took me a second to realize why I was lying on top of the sheets and not proudly tucked between them; that instead of doing a 180 I had just body slammed myself in to the wall.

With the exact same look on her face my mom simply said, “Neat trick Katie” and walked away. 

She eventually did come back to see if the noise she was hearing was sobbing or uncontrollable giggling.  It was the latter of the two.  I suspect she spent that night lying in bed thinking about how proud she was of her brilliant baby girl…either that or wondering where she went wrong!