A New Christmas Tradition

DH is very good about helping me clean floors. He is a handy guy with a vacuum and has no problem moving furniture around to vacuum under it.

However, this year he started a new tradition. He tried to suck up the draping I had around the stereo - to hide all the cords and stuff underneath.

So this new tradition got me thinking about Christmases past. I remember how the girls used to play with Colorforms. And they discovered that they stuck to the doorwall, so our doorwall was always covered in these little shapes, people and other stuff. Cleaning that stuff out of the doorwall tracks was not fun though!

Older daughter's first Christmas - her paternal grandfather, who is known to his granddaughters and their cousins as Big Kid - spent a hundred dollars on mechanical toys for an eight-month-old child who was terrified of this stuff. Especially the Indian Monkey who beat a drum. Interesting that Older daughter really likes all kinds of monkeys now. Her second Christmas was spent with us yelling at the dog to leave the Christmas tree alone until we discovered it was OD pulling off all the decorations.

Younger daughter's first Christmas Santa brought her a little doll with a rattle in it called Jingle Baby. She slept with that until she received her little brown bear for a birthday gift from OD. YD gifted OD with a white bear who was promptly named Teddy. YD and OD still have these well-loved stuffed animals.

This year, I tried to start a new tradition of going out for dinner on Christmas Eve. After all, I am the only who cooks the big family dinner, I deserve a night off. Good idea in theory, but most places closed really early and we got kicked out of Steak n Shake at 6:15. Maybe next year we'll get pizza!

Christmas Traditions

I was going to write about Christmas Traditions, but Middle-Aged Woman over at Unmitigated did that job for me. So I am going to write about something else, that has been bothering me - feet.

Not mine - mine are mostly okay, even in their just like dad's dryness. I go through tons of lotion and my Ped egg and I are almost inseparable. What is bothering me is this Homedics commercial where they show the foot massager and I have to wonder - is the model related to DH and Younger Daughter? She has their feet. If you look closely, toes 1-4 are all almost the same length and then little baby toe is about 1/3 the length of the other toes. I thought this was a family trait and now I am wondering if this points to an ethnic group. Is it really possible for someone else to have those extremely long toes?

The Gremlins Behind the Door!

Yes, yes, I know DH let the monsters out of the closet, but it looks like we also have gremlins behind the doors. You know, those beings that push an open door partly closed so that if you aren't watching where you are going - *SMACK* - face first into the door. This is particularly worrisome for me when I need to get up in the middle of the night. If I turn on a light, it is guaranteed I won't go back to sleep. Instead, I walk arms extended, waving, like a spastic blind-person, hoping to thwart the gremlins.