Ho, Ho, Ho

The Fat Man has come and gone and all is well in the Johnson Household. We had a big holiday. I had to come to work today to get some rest! I certainly don’t want to be at the house trying to wade through all of that wrapping paper and cardboard and toy splatter. It looks like Wal-Mart exploded in my living room. Sounds like a Daddy project to me. So, I’m at work today saving up those vacation days for something else this year. You know us—there’s a vacation somewhere in our future.

I can’t hide from this blog, though. I talked some smack a few posts ago about having a Mommy-Daddy trip this year, so, when I e-mailed my friend Sonja the Travel Agent to price out another Big Johnson Adventure to Disney World, she called me on it. (It’s good to have friends who keep you honest!)

You know perfectly well that Steve and Charlotte going off alone isn’t going to happen; there are too many Shorties counting on us. I must been having a My-God-We-Need-A-Break-From-Screaming-Children moment when I wrote that post. See, we always left the Shorties with my Mother when we wanted to go off for a Big People Vacation in the past. God seriously put a kink in my program with this cancer business. (What was He thinking?) The Rolling Stones are wise, wise men. You really can’t always get what you want.

Santa brought Elaina an IPod/MP3 player thingy. (Well, a knock off; he’s a smart shopper.) So that her little brother doesn’t steal it, Santa brought him one too. I kept asking the other half of the dynamic duo if she wanted an IPod too, but she kept insisting no, no, she wanted school supplies to play school with and clothes from Justice.

Since I am a wise woman, I asked Santa to please bring her a CD player just so she could listen to something on the way to Grandma’s house. I knew that the siblings would be dialed into their new MP3 players and she would be jealous. (It’s hard to drag a dry erase board and markers across town to show off.) So, we get to Grandma’s and everyone sees the chickens come in, two IPods and one CD player rocking it old school, and my cousin laughed and said, “Well, we can see who Cinderella is at your house.”

Lest you fret over my Unfortunate Child, Elise made up for it by getting more packages under the tree than anyone else in the whole house. (You can make $86.00 IPod dollars go a LONG way in the Parent/Teacher Store, my Friends.) Lily even got the bicycle that she started asking for four days before the Big Event. (Santa was on it this year.) It was a big day. I’m looking forward to a quiet new year (ever the optimist). Of course, I went nutso on the decorations this year, so I’ll have a week’s worth of hauling stuff to the basement, but other than that, it’s all good. Hope that your holidays were all wonderful and warm and full of family!