Christmas Eves To Remember

December 24, 2011

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Growing up, it was a family tradition to gather together on Christmas Eve at my grandparent’s house. The family gathering consisted of…

5 Uncles

3 Aunts

Their spouses

15 cousins

1 brother

2 parents

Grandma and Grandpa

Several Great-Aunts and Uncles, depending on the year.

That’s a minimum of 36 people in a house that couldn’t have been bigger than 800 square feet.

Oh, and it had 6 foot ceilings.

Around Thanksgiving time, we exchanged names for gift-giving. Come Christmas Eve, the 4 foot Christmas tree was barely visible under the gifts.

I remember walking into Gram’s helping to carry an armful of gifts, trying to not slip on the ice and snow outside. It was freezing every year. My cousins and I went back and forth between hanging with our Dads who were watching football and our Moms in the dining room. We usually grabbed a plate of food – Christmas cookies, meatballs in marinara sauce, cold cuts on little bakery rolls, and shrimp cocktail were staples – and sat on the stairs that were in the middle of the house to wait.

Around 4p.m. every year, my Aunt Manky, Uncle Greg, and Uncle Art would disappear. After Uncle Art passed away, my cousin Timmy took his place.

My cousins and I never realized that people left – it was too busy to notice a few people being gone. But we always knew that if we sat on the stairs long enough after we ate, Santa would come. One of us would hear his bells and alert the others. We would wait until we could see him through the front windows, and someone would open the door for him. Grandma always greeted him at the door with a big hug.

Santa would sit and as gifts were handed to him he would call people up to sit on his lap and get their photo taken. Everyone had to sit on Santa’s lap – no exceptions. That means if you were too scared, your Mom would go with you. If you were too cool as a teen, your Aunts and Uncles would tease you until you sat on his lap. If you were getting too old, well… you never really got too old. Everyone sat on Santa’s lap.

Steve’s first year at our Christmas Eve gathering

There were mountains of used wrapping paper everywhere, as everyone got at least one gift. After Santa left, everyone would linger a little bit longer, but people would begin to leave and drive home to get ready for Santa to come to their houses.

I have amazing memories of Christmas Eve, and it’s hard living far away from family this time of year. I try to have traditions for my kids, but I can’t come close to Gram and Pop’s house.

What Christmas Eve and Christmas Day traditions happen in your family? Are you able to keep up traditions that you had as a child?

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Need an idea for a Christmas tradition? We started a scavenger hunt tradition last year, and are super excited about doing it again this year. It slows down the present opening and gets everyone moving a bit on Christmas morning!

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Meet Louie, Our Elf!

December 22, 2011

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Who else has a Christmas elf?

We just got one. Yes, my kids are 7 and 11 and we just heard about the elf this year. I’m a little slow.

Louie is a welcome addition to the family… sometimes.

Sometimes he is naughtier than the leprechaun that visits us in March.

And sometimes he leaves messes for us to clean up. Because I need one more little one to clean up after.

But when he makes messes, he usually does something nice to make up for it. After the flour debacle, we woke up to find him stamping my Christmas cards.

Most of the time he’s good, though. And he keeps us on our toes and on our best behavior. He reports back to Santa, you know.

In the past few weeks, we have found Louie bowling with our fruit,

taking a long soak in a hot tub full of marshmallows,

keeping a watchful eye on Billy the hibernating lizard,

helping himself to some of our Christmas candy,

playing with the gift wrapping,

and swinging from our window blinds.

He is quite the character.

If you’re in the market for an elf, we  bought Louie from Amazon. He’s actually called Christopher Pop-in-kins, and I just saw that he’s on sale for $11. There are many variations of Louie. We chose ours because he looked the friendliest to me :)

I post our photos on facebook and tag Christopher, and he always responds with a fun and witty comment:

This may be the last year that Jack believes that Louie reports back to Santa, but I have a feeling that we’ll have fun playing with him for many holiday seasons.

Do you have an elf of the shelf? What kind of trouble does he or she get into?

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Dear Santa, I Need Some Help…

December 19, 2011

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Michael is eleven. Apparently, when you turn eleven and are tuned in to the secrets of Santa, you can ask for crazy gifts.

Maybe because it’s not going in Santa’s sleigh?

Or maybe because the elves don’t have to make them?

Michael’s list this year was written on a post it note.

A post it note, people.

We didn’t have many buying options.

1. A quad. We laughed at this. A lot.

2. An iPod touch. To replace his 18 month old iPod touch that refuses to accept the newest update because it’s not compatible with this version of the iPod touch, rendering most of his games unplayable. Thank you, Steve Jobs.

3. Two video games, one that he also asked his Grandma for. We had a discussion about asking more than one person for the same gift. In addition, I had to stop him from buying this game for himself yesterday.

4. Tickets to a U of A game.

Should I prepare myself for a car on his list next year?

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We Can Explain.

December 13, 2011

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Really?

Can you explain…

the live worm on the ceiling fan?

the yarn necklace on the dog?

the stash in your closet that rivals “Hoarders?”

the broken ornament? (broken when juggling the glass ornaments)

the loose worms in the living room?

the loose crickets in the den throughout the entire house?

the nail and hammer forgotten under my back tire?

the exploding toilet and blatant misuse of toilet paper?

If you can’t explain these to Santa, we will. You’re an energetic and curious 7 year-old who doesn’t let life pass by quietly.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Linked with my dear friends Amanda, Kristi and Lolli for Wordless/Wordful Wednesday.

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2011 LA Auto Show – A Mom’s Perspective

December 11, 2011

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Did I tell you how much fun I had at the auto show?

Yes. I went to the auto show.

Without my boys.

With my girl.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s the same thing I was thinking.

“Why am I going to the auto show? I don’t blog about cars. I don’t really know about cars.”

But I drive cars. And I ride in them. And I put my boys in them. So, technically, I’m an expert.

And because I’m an expert, my peeps at GMC invited me to be art of their social media team at the auto show. I was among car enthusiasts, auto bloggers, and other lifestyle bloggers.

Can I tell you that I had a BLAST?!

I am dying to share some of my photos, and I know you’re dying to see them.

And if you’re not, then pretend to be enthused. Ok?

This is Tom Peters. Tom designed the Camaro that you see here. Every curve. Every bump. Every surface.

The new Camaro has a suede interior. Since I haven’t ridden in a Camaro since I was in high school, I can’t tell you if this is a new feature or not, but I can tell you that it’s pretty nice.

You know who this is, right?

Jay Leno has driven almost 10,000 miles with his Chevy Volt. Normally, that’s not a reason to have a party. But the Volt is an electric car. Leno has driven 88 of those 10,500 miles with gas.

I learned a new term at the auto show: hypermiler.

Jay Leno is a hypermiler, as are the guys who drive Volts to work in Detroit during the winter and refuse to turn on the heat in their car, lest run out of electric energy and force the Volt to switch to gas.

Crazy, if you ask me. But kind of cool.

This is a Cadillac concept car called the Ciel. Concept means it’ll never be manufactured like it is, but it’s pretty cool, huh? Definitely not a city car.

The paint job on this Camaro was amazing. Like, “WowHowDoYouGetItSoShiny?” amazing.

The show was a little overwhelming. It was huge. This is part of Chevy’s area. Just part. The big Chevy bowtie on the wall was a television screen. They played commercials and such every once in a while. it was fun.

Another overwhelming (but totally fun) part for this almost stay-at-home-mom? Press conferences.

This was the Cadillac press conference. On the stage, Cadillac introduced their new luxury sedan, the XTS. I’m not a car buff, but I can tell you that some of the features on this car are just COOL. Like automatic breaking and the CUE (Cadillac user experience) interface. If I had to sum up why the auto show was so cool in three minutes, I’d ask you to watch this video.

You just can’t experience the auto show with a post. I’m so thankful to Amy for building up her buff arms holding the camera and taping the XTS reveal. It really is quite an experience.

This is the Chevy press conference that Amy videotaped. Denise, you’ll want to click to 4:40 and watch from there, at the very least :)

Being at the auto show was cool, but even cooler was being able to meet people like Christine Park, who designed the XTS.

Can we take a moment to think about how awesome that is?

She designed a car!

Christine kindly showed Amy and I around the interior of the car. There was a reason for every fabric and material, every stitch and every curve. I had never thought about the person who designs a car before.

As Amy and I were walking around the convention center, we ran across some Hot Wheels cars – life sized ones.

And we took a few minutes to stop by the other car manufacturers. A few of them displayed some fun concept cars, and had some interactive props.

A grilled cheese truck, for instance:

And the fabric covered snowboarding car:

With New Balance wheels,

Room for your boards and SkullCandy speakers that look like headphones,

An iPod docking station (please excuse overexposed photo),

and… a heated footwarmer for the passenger. It is a car designed with snowboarding in mind, after all.

There are just some things you don’t see every day, and this car is one of them.

And one more thing, really quick. I’d hate to leave this out.

The nice people at Porsche were kind enough to give me a tour of their new 911 Carrera.

Knowing I was a “Mommy Blogger,” they wanted to tell me about the features in the new model.

Like room for car seats.

Porsche’s car seats.

You can buy them to fit into the back seat.

Click photo for credit

And there is plenty of trunk space!

Did you know that Porsche cars have their engine in the back and trunk in the front?

Seriously, though, it is a pretty amazing car. If I have an extra $90,000 lying around one day, I’ll totally look at buying one – without the car seats, though. It’ll be all mine.

So, there’s my auto show experience. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Have you ever been to an auto show? Would you ever go to one?

Thank you, once again, to the amazing folks at GMC, who brought me with them and asked nothing of me in return. Every GMC employee that I have met thus far impresses me more than I can say. They are, by far, the high of all my blogging experiences combined.

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