Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Well maybe sometimes it is.  But seeing as how my neighbors still have their Christmas lights on, I figured what the hell; let’s do the annual end of the year holiday recap right now, today.  Who cares that we’re a complete two weeks into the new year anyway?  These stories are timeless right? Better late than never right?  It’s better to finish the race last, than to not finish at all…right?  Okay, so have I completely talked myself out of being a lazy bum and slacking on the holiday post?  Yes you say, well great, let’s proceed with the recap of Christmas, Tre’s Bday, and New Year’s.

Christmas 2011

This year our Christmas was a little bit different than it has been in past years, this year, for the first time ever, Ty was not with us.  Let me be the first to tell you, it sucked!  It sucked for us, and I know it sucked for him, but as part of the ruling (read about that foolishness here), Ty was forced to spend Christmas week in NC.  We did have a few extra attendees for our Christmas day festivities, but neither my Mom nor the cameo appearance from Uncle Carl could make up for Ty’s absence.

We got the festivities started early this year in preparation for Ty’s departure.  We started a new tradition of cutting down our own Christmas Tree, (if you haven’t read about that, go do it now, it made the top 11 of ’11), made our annual ginger bread houses (this year featured a tree), and sang Christmas carols (with the help and assistance of the I Am T-Pain app).  So as you can see, each of our traditions had a little bit of something new to them; it seemed fitting since our biggest tradition of being a family on Christmas was forcefully being broken.

Open Up Wide Kiddo

Gingerbread Tree

Another twist to our Christmas traditions was the Christmas Eve wrapping marathon that Fefe embarks on every year.  Each year she is up until 1-2am wrapping gifts, which means I’m up until 2-3am organizing them under the tree.  This year, I implored her to start wrapping earlier in the week, she resisted and on Christmas Eve she was faced with a mountain of gifts, a mountain of paper, and only a small amount of time.  But this year was different, she called in for backup.  There was a 4 woman sweat shop going, and man where those woman efficient (or so I thought).  In addition to having help this year, Fefe (and crew) also helped herself to a few glasses of wine as well.  This seemed innocent at the time, but as we later found out, the drinking and wrapping tradition will not be making a repeat performance next year.

The Stage Is All Set

Christmas morning arrived and I couldn’t wait until Tre woke up so we could open gifts.  As some of you already know, when it comes to Christmas I’m a big kid.  I’m seriously considering seeking help for this condition.  By all logic, I should have grown out of it by now, but for the past 15 years, I have been unable to sleep for more than 3 consecutive hours on Christmas Eve.  This year taking the cake, raking in a whopping total of ZERO hours of sleep.  I felt like a crackhead, gifts being my poison.  By 5am, I was sneaking into Tre’s room, flicking his lights on and off, hoping to wake him up.  By 7, after watching A Christmas Story nearly 3 times back to back, I resorted to more drastic measures: let the dog out and throw his ball in Tre’s room.  It worked, a few minutes later Tre came stumbling into our room and “woke” me up.

The poor child was clearly still in a stupifiedsleepy state, I mean seriously, the boy woke me up and exclaimed that his socks came off.  You would have thought that our house was robbed and all of the gifts were gone by the way he sounded.  I couldn’t believe it, it’s Christmas morning and all Tre is concerned about was his stupid socks?  I’m gonna be honest, being a Christmas fanatic and all, it kinda pissed me off.  After waking Fefe up and wiping the crust out of her eyes, we all headed downstairs and the look on Tre’s face was priceless, I mean, you hear people talk about the money shot, this was definitely it!  He was super excited and couldn’t wait to tear into his gifts, but first we had to go wake up Nani and attempt to wake up Uncle Carl.  Once the gang was all together (with this exception of Uncle Carl) Tre went to work.

The Money Shot - Total Disbelief

The first gift he grabbed belonged to Ty, as did the second, and third.  Fortunately, we were quick enough to avoid any re-wrap situations and explained to Tre the importance of actually looking at the name on the present.  Things went a lot smoother after that conversation.  For some odd reason, Tre kept making reference to the sun and finishing this work (opening presents) before the sun came out.  I have no clue where this came from, or why it was so important to him to have all of his gifts opened before the sun came out.  It was extremely funny until he was unable to complete his goal, and was heartbroken. He was seriously upset, once the sun was up, he had a semi meltdown and gift opening had to be put on hold for a few minutes.  This was strange, but no stranger than his bow fetish from last Christmas.  Luckily, we were able to get back to our regularly scheduled program and enjoy an entire day of playing, and playing, and playing.

Tank Sporting His New Christmas Gifts

Check back tomorrow for the Bday update!  I’ll keep posting holiday themed posts for as long as my neighbors Christmas lights are up, because remember, it’s never too late.