Christmas

Well, Christmas was, um, interesting. This has got to be the most stressful holiday season yet! Just about everything that could go wrong, did! The week before Christmas, Shane was on call 24/7. That made it very difficult to get anything done. As usual I waited until the last minute to do my shopping. Since Katie was with her father this year for Christmas Day, we talked Santa in to coming a day early. Of course he obliged. But that meant I had one less day to get everything ready.

So I finished up my shopping and got our turkey on the 23rd (our Christmas Eve). Kim came over and helped me wrap and bake magic cookies, thank goodness.

Christmas Eve (our Christmas morning, if you're following closely) the kiddos got up and opened their presents. Everything went great, they were so excited! just as I was getting ready to make breakfast, Shane got a call to go to work. Argh!!! So now I had all of the present clean-up to clean up. Plus I had 4 kids to get ready for my mom & Larry to come over for dinner, which was supposed to be ready at 6 o'clock (remember that--it's important). At about 10 am I put my 20 lb. turkey in the oven. Off I go to get my stuff done. An HOUR AND A HALF later, I go to check on the turkey and baste it. My trusty oven has decided to turn itself off!!!! Okay, so now I'm way behind. I wound up having to take it over to my neighbor's house to cook it. But there were still other things I needed an oven for. This is just great!! Well, I made do with what I had. What choice did I have? So my mom & Larry get to my house at about 4:30. We opened presents and chatted. it was all very nice, but we were incredibly worried about when dinner would be ready. My mother does not like to be kept waiting for her food. Well, 6 o'clock rolls around. Was my turkey ready, you ask? It was a Christmas miracle! The turkey was ready and juicy and everything turned out wonderful! After dinner, the kids got riled up and trashed my house. The adults were getting cranky and I was ready for everyone to leave so I could put my kids to bed.

Christmas morning we got up, had muffins, watched to Disney parade and got ready to go to my in-laws. I was tense from the night before and I knew it would not get any better. We got there and exchanged gifts. It was a nice time. BUT--then it was time to sit down for dinner. When you get that many Oslunds in one place, there is bound to be some issues. And there was. After we all sat down, Sherri remembered that she forgot to put out the cranberry sauce. So Shane got up to get it. It reminded me of something. I told Sherri that for Christmas next year, I wanted a cranberry sauce dish. She says, "Oh, not to be morbid, but Gary and I have to make out a will. You guys need to think of what you want." So everyone starts teasing me saying that all I want is a cranberry sauce dish. We all had a good laugh. I said, "Okay, I can think of something else, then. I want the set of pictures of (Sherri & Gary's) grandparents. Sherri tells me that this my start a battle. Mary pipes up at this point to inform her mother that those pictures SHOULD NOT go to in-laws. Okay, yeah, I want them for myself. Uh, no, they would be Shane's of course. Like if we were to get divorced I would take them?! Well, I had never been treated like an outsider in that house until that very moment. AND I DID NOT LIKE IT! For goodness sake, I have been a more permanent fixture in that house in that last 10 years than Mary has! So needless to say, it put a huge damper on my evening. Then, my wonderful 11 year old nephew, Dylan chimes in. "Nana", he asks, " do you have a d*ldo?" My mouth shot open! I could not believe he just yelled that across the dining room! And on Christmas no less! Shawn starts making excuses for him saying he spelled it, he didn't say it. Okay, most of the kids at that table know how to spell! So Mary chimes in again. "It's my fault...I call him a d*ldo all the time. My kids have started doing it too." Okay, you freaking idiot! You be proud if that! The next topic of conversation involved making fun of Shane's and my financial state. I had to ask them a couple of times to stop, saying that it wasn't an appropriate time to talk about it (like it would ever be!), but nobody seemed to care what I thought. They just continued making cracks and laughing about it. So, with my head hung, I quietly finished my dinner. Afterwards, I had to beg Shane to leave, claiming that I had a stomach ache. So we did. We looked at some Christmas lights, came home, put the kids to bed and watched a movie, where I fell asleep on the couch.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!