The Continuing Adventures of Christmas

In our last episode, it was noted that Jesse was doing everything, short of getting down on his knees and pleading, to open his presents.  That trend continues.  A few presents came the other day from Aunt Katherine, and he immediately began to inspect them.  After a few minutes, recalling back to Aunt Barbie’s presents, which had a note on them to open (remember that word) before Christmas, he stopped searching through the presents and asked Ang, “Mom, how do you spell ‘open’?”  Apparently, he was trying to determine if any of the presents were okay to open now.   Barbie, you have created a monster!

Ang and I (mostly Ang), had a little present wrapping party the other night, getting all of the family gifts ready to go under the tree.  Then, sadistic little person that she is, Ang decided to only put a few new ones out each day, up until Christmas.  This would ensure maximum torment for Jesse, with a few more presents to inspect and scheme over each day.  I think he’ll be completely stir crazy by Christmas Eve. 

As Ang followed her little plan of putting  a few presents out each morning, I suggested one morning that maybe the tree was hatching them, like a bird.  That quickly caught on, and the next morning Jesse exclaimed, after coming downstairs and seeing the additional presents, "Dad!  This Christmas tree hatched more presents!" 

As Christmas got really close, we began to talk about what to leave out for Santa in the way of treats.  I explaining to Jesse and Soleil that I was pretty sure Santa might like it if we left him Hotwings rather than cookies this year.  Jesse was adamant that this was not a good idea, and that Santa liked cookies more.  Dang.

We let the kids buy small gifts for each other this year, which we really haven't done before.  It was a lot of fun taking them to the store and letting them pick out something for their siblings.  I took Jesse by himself, so that was easy, but I took Rhett and Soleil together--much harder.  We started out at Wal-mart, and because the parking lot was full, just walked to some of the other stores (namely, Party City) where we ended up getting some things.  Rhett got Soleil's present there, a pink boa, and Soleil got Rhett's present there, a plastic pitchfork which goes with a devil costume.  Not sure what she was trying to tell him there.  Anyway, in order to ensure that neither saw the gift the other was getting for them, I helped them sneak up the register while the other one was occupied, then I ran it to the car while they stayed together--all on the sly.  This was a good plan until I realized how long it had been since I exercised.  I ran about a half a mile on those trips between the car and the store.