The (Belated) Christmas Update

Have I ever shown you my tacky white Christmas tree? I bought it super-cheap last year (2008) at Target right before Christmas. It has super-tacky colored lights -- you know how I feel about colored lights. So I'm not sure what possessed me last year to buy the tacky tree. I take that back -- now that I'm thinking about it, I do recall thinking that this Christmas (2009) we'd be able to afford a real tree for inside the house and I could move the tacky white one out onto the porch for the annual Christmas party. Well, not only were we unable to afford a real tree this year, we were also unable to afford a Christmas party, so the tacky white tree went right back in the front window at Christmas this year. The boys, you will note, did not care one bit about how tacky that tree is and hung the ornaments, rearranged them every day for the next three weeks, and piled up random toys and partially eaten biscuits between the tree and the wall (all of which I found yesterday when I took the tree down).

The boys had a great Christmas -- so sorry I didn't update you with that info a week ago but we were busy playing Mario Carts and I could not be bothered to update my blog. We made cookies for Santa the day or two before and he ate them with gusto, though I need to remember to buy Santa a new beard next year -- he kept pulling his beard down and sticking the cookies in with most of his face showing -- I kept waiting for Casey to yell, "Aaagh! Santa's pulling his face off!" and blowing our cover, but he didn't.

We played it safe this year (you recall last year's fiasco, I'm sure) -- instead of coordinating our sneaking downstairs to catch Santa, we set up the security camera to broadcast Santa into Casey's room. Pretty failsafe except for that beard business.

Casey wanted three things from Santa this year -- a Nintendo DS, a hamster, and a Rubix Cube. Casey really only wanted a Nintendo DS and a hamster. He had no idea what a Rubix Cube is. Joe wanted the Rubix Cube. Santa brought Casey Wii games and a Lego Star Wars watch. No Nintendo DS. No hamster. Casey wasn't disappointed, though, because I told him that Santa likely knew that he had destroyed his Playstation Portable this year and his mom and dad refused to allow him to have another portable gaming device unless he saved up his money and bought it himself. As for the hamster, I told Casey that Santa knew that the hamster would likely die in his own filth because mom and dad would not be cleaning up after the hamster and that it would be Casey's job to do it and since he has trouble getting himself clean, Santa didn't think he was ready for a hamster. Casey asked me how Santa knew these things and I said, "I texted him and told him." Santa is very technologically advanced.

Mace got a new GeoTrax train set and a Cars raceway. As you can plainly see, he did not get any shirts. Maybe next year.