Pajama Pants Nation

We hosted family for Christmas this year. That was a first for us. Usually, we spend Christmas morning at our house and then travel over the highway and through the snow to my parents’ house. This year, however, we hosted Stephanie’s brother, Matt, his wife, Dorothy, and their kids, “Soren” and “Emerson.”
It started safely enough. Cleaning and decorating. We don’t clean as often as we should–it seems pointless with a 2-year-old hurricane as part of the family–but we went into high gear for this one. We even vacuumed.

Like I said, it started safely enough. However, things got bloody. You see, we have a fireplace. The fuel for a fire place is wood. We don’t have a woods in our backyard, so we have to buy it. (My dad has a boatload of firewood, but he has it reserved for someone else.) Well, the wood we buy is plastic wrapped with a handle stapled to one of the pieces. Unfortunately, when I de-stapled the yule logs the screwdriver I used (any tool can be the wrong tool) slipped and gouged a two-inch slice across my hand. Blood dripped. Wood was stacked. Life moved on.

The next day, our guests showed up, interrupting the Vikings-Packers game. Of all the nerve.

I’d be remiss (not that I know what that means) if I didn’t mention that we spent a good portion of Friday waiting for “Soren’s” luggage to be delivered to the house. Take a pathetic airline, combine it with a snow storm, and you’ve got yourself spending a Friday waiting for a phone call and post-phone call wait for delivery.

That Saturday, we went skiing. We had never gone skiing before, so we signed up for lessons. Just surviving the lesson was more work than I had planned for the entire day. We did a few basic skills you’d see at any Olympic event (like walking with one ski on and one ski off) and then took the lift up to the top of Mount Crumpet. We took the easy slope down (“easy” being relative, of course). Oh, did I fail. I spent a lot of time trying to get up off the snow and even more time looking down to the bottom of the hill with demoralized spirits. I almost got to the bottom when one of my skis removed itself from my foot. Rather than try to put my ski back on and nearly kill myself (and perhaps others), I just removed my other ski and walked the rest of the way. The instructor gave us some tips on going back down the hill; as if any of us were going to try it again. Then we went inside to rest our weary legs and eat. I did go back (a long while later) and go down the easy slope again. It’s a bit easier when you’re not trying to stop every 20 feet. But it was still difficult. (And I still haven’t successfully dismounted the lift.)

After skiing, we found ourselves ordering pizza. Through a miscommunication, we found ourselves with double the number of pizzas planned. A great day. A really great day!

The next day was Christmas Eve. We did all the traditional Christmas Eve stuff. Which was…um…Christmasy. I watched football while The Toddler of Action slept and the rest of the crew went to a movie called “Happy Feet,” which was not only the title of the movie but a description of when the movie finally ended and the crowds raced out to put that waste of time behind them. That evening we had a traditional Christmas dinner. (If your tradition includes some weird growth-like thing which looks like a turkey loaf and tastes vaguely like overcooked turkey substitute. I love it.) Then we forced our guests to watch Mr. Bean’s Christmas episode. (The VHS version as the DVD version cut out many of the best bits. The series has 8 episodes and they had to cut some parts out? Absurd!) Oh, and The Toddler of Wrapping Paper got to open a present: a Thomas the Tank Engine play tent. He loves it and plays in it a lot. However, since then, he hasn’t really watched his Thomas DVD a lot and hasn’t really played with his train set. I think The Toddler of Viewers Like You looked at the playtent and said “This is a great thing, but the fact that there is one suggests that, perhaps, Thomas has jumped the shark. While a train jumping anything, much less a shark, is a remarkable feat, I just feel less enthused about the whole train experience.” You’ll have to excuse the Toddler of Verbiage; that’s just the way he talks.

Then we stoked up the ol’ fireplace and made s’mores. Good time had by all. Well worth the previous blood letting.

Christmas morn. Christmas morn. We opened presents. I’d love to go into greater detail than that, but we got The Toddler of Farm Toys a set of miniature John Deere implements in a cardboard box. Of course, those toys are attached to the box with those miniature cables. I had to get the wire cutters and cut all those cables. Thus, I have NO IDEA what anyone received for Christmas. But, for the rest of the day, we ate and played and ate some more. (And ate some more s’mores.)

Here’s what I got:

a Toblerone
Candy Cane Pop Rocks
A night cap
A Homer Simpson “The Scream” tee
a Trogdor hat
Strongbad E-mail DVD
Homestarrunner keychain
1987/1991 Twins World Series Highlights DVD
Eddie Izzard’s “Unrepeatable”
Talladega Nights DVD
Six day-old doughnuts
Tech support from Matt for my web site (to control blog spam and help with online polls)
Several downloaded songs
Classic Peanuts DVD
Handheld Deal or No Deal game
Quite the lot of loot, I must say.

We also received a Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX (several of those words have a TM or a C superscripted) computer camera. Now we can videoconference over the internet or, if you ask nicely, we can set up a webcam so the entire world can watch us not vacuum.

On Boxing Day, I had to work. Everyone else went to the Spam Museum. (It’s debatable who got the better end of that deal.)

The next day was the day they were to fly home. Good Morning America had a segment about guests being pests (their rhyme, not mine) and staying too long. I left it on that channel as a joke, but by the time anyone came in the room, GMA was on the next segment and the only statement made was that I watch really poor morning television. We spent the rest of the day doing odds-and-ends activities until it was time to head to the airport and bid family a fond farewell.

5 days later, we vacuumed.

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The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not neccessarily reflect those of the rest of the family.

© 2007, Mark Wentz