Christmas update ...

Quick rundown of the past week ...

We spent Christmas at my parent's place in Oamaru last year. This year the rugrats decided that they wanted to stay home, and invited their Gran and Pop to come spend Christmas with us. My grandma lives with my folks, and has been ill, so they declined.

My mom's birthday is on Christmas Eve, so we drove up to see them the day before Christmas, surprised her with her birthday presents, and did the whole present exchange.

It's all a lot different than Christmas at home. The MOTH's folks used to own an Irish pub, and Christmas was always scores of people coming and going, and mountains of food everywhere. It was basically a three day party !!!

Christmas Day itself was pretty quiet. However, Santa was extremely generous this year ... both the rugrats stockings contained Tamagotchi pets, and there was also a PS2 on the table (a purchase Mrs Santa knew absolutely nothing about, I might add !!!) And because there are going to be several lengthy car trips coming up, we gave them a dual-screen in-car DVD player. Technology rules for the minors in our house this year !!!

I received a couple of good books ... and there has been chocolate everywhere. As my father would say ... "I have plenty of will power, but not a lot of won't power" ... so the scales at WW were up slightly this week. Plenty of time to start again in the New Year, what with all the dancing and partying ...

The MOTH has had the first week of the holidays off work, then I am off the second week. Beyond that we don't have much of a plan, except for it being a mix of grandparents and expensive holiday programmes ...

Well alrighty then !!!

We took the rugrats to the mall this afternoon.

When I was little, I had my photo taken with Santa every year whether I wanted to or not. I also suspect that there may even be a coupla photos of me in more recent years cuddled up to a mall Santa with my mom. We used to have the rugrats photos taken with Santa every year too, until we moved to Whangarei where there is not only no Santa, but no mall for him to live in ...

This is probably the last year we will be able to get away with the whole Santa scenario. S is still a firm believer, but K has spent the past 12 months trying to get me to confirm that Santa is actually us. It's like he is pretty sure he knows it's not real, but he just needs adult confirmation. And I am not prepared to do that ... I'm not ready for my little guy to be too old for Santa !!

Me : "So, how would you like to go and have your photo taken with Santa ?"
S : "No."
Me (amazed she isn't jumping at the chance) : "Why not ?"
S : "Cos he isn't the real Santa and I'm not sitting on some strange old man's knee !"

How can you argue with that ?!?!?!?

Just saying ...

To the man who reversed into my car at lunchtime ...

I realise you didn't actually inflict major damage on my car.

I realise that a severely bent licence plate is probably getting off lightly considering the size of the tow bar you hit my car with.

I realise my car already has a few scratches on it, and is by no means pristine.

But it's my car. And it was stationary, just sitting there minding its own business.

You reversed into me remember ?!?!?!

I don't appreciate being made to feel I'm being totally unreasonable by objecting to incompetent drivers hitting my car.

I realise that you probably didn't appreciate it when I called you a "decrepit old git who shouldn't be allowed on the road".

But would it have killed you to apologise ?!?!?

So there !!!

Lamb chops for dinner tonight.

We have adopted a rule for use at the dinner table from one of the announcers on the radio station we listen to in the car on the way to school ... "if it has bones in it, you can eat it with your fingers".

However, we have modified the rule to include the addendum "... after you have eaten everything else on your plate" (there's nothing worse than trying to eat with greasy cutlery).

Part way through dinner I notice that S is eating her lamb chop ... with her fingers. So I do the whole "Mummy-wants-you-to-have-nice-manners" spiel and remind her of the "... only after you've eaten everything else on your plate" part of the rule.

As I turn back to my own plate I catch the MOTH's eye ... his guilty, "it-wasn't-me" eye ... as he puts his lamb chop down and goes back to his salad ...

And from the other end of the table comes a small voice "Yeah dad, stop teaching me bad habits !!!"

It's hard work looking this good ...

Way back in the dim dark recesses of time when we first hooked up, the MOTH was responsible for bringing home a Christmas tree at the appropriate time each year. And for the first seven years he did a fantastic job, providing specimens of splendour that regaled us with their glorious symmetry and pungent pine needle odour ...

Unfortunately, around about year eight, such glorious specimens were nowhere to be found, and we ended up with a rather sorry spectacle, complete with drooping pine needles, and a bare patch we had to turn to the wall.

There is a point to this. The point being that, about two weeks after the eighth Christmas, I found the perfect tree on sale at a local department store ... eight feet of dark green, bushy, symmetrical artificial gloriousness.

The MOTH bids me inform you at this point that it doesn't smell. "But look !!!" I say ... "Just look !!! It's symmetrical !!! And the right shape !!! AND it has over 1,000 tips for extra bushiness !!!"

However, "over 1,000 tips" is an awful lot when one has to individually position them for just the right amount of bushiness and symmetry !!!

Which is why the MOTH doesn't help. He says it serves me right.

Right on the money ...

We had our office Christmas lunch today. In spite of the fact we usually look forward to "casual Friday" and show up in jeans, we decided we would all make a real effort for the occasion ... pretty dresses, sparkly tops, make-up, high heels, the whole she-bang ...

One of the women was ummm, interestingly attired. The phrase "little-black-dress" is appropriate, with special emphasis on the word "little", and she was wearing shoes I last saw advertised on Trade-Me as "suitable for exotic dancing".

As we were walking out the door one of our clients walked in. He did a classic double-take, then quick as a flash yelled into the Managing Director's office ... "Hey M !!! You gotta start paying these girls more ... this poor woman can only afford to buy half a dress !!!"

Finally ... a chance to catch up !!!

Having finally recovered from the frenetic activity associated with the Ice Show (just in time to prepare for the frenetic activity associated with Christmas) I thought that maybe I should post some of the 300-odd photos that my MOTH took of us at the show.

Unfortunately, due to issues with fog machines, spotlights, and skating being what it is (ie. people moving very fast in circles of varying sizes) a lot of the photos were a disaster.

We have rather a lot of photos of the piece of ice where either S or K were a split second before, several photos of the back of their heads, and more than a few of a S-sized blur as she whirled past. But I've picked out some of the better ones to give an idea ...

The premise of the whole show was Disney on Ice ... Mulan travelled through all the Disney fairy tales meeting a pile of characters from Aladdin through to Snow White.

First off there was a big opening scene with all the skaters in their different groups altogether. This is the bit before they headed onto the ice where the MOTH told the rugrats to "pose for the camera" ... check out the pout on S's best friend !!!!
The first scene the rugrats were in was Pocohantas, involving bigger kids dressed as trees, smaller rugrats dressed as animals, and K dressed as either a Christmas tree or a porcupine, depending on who you asked (grin) ...
S and the rest of her development group were "The Wind", complete with big long sticks and ribbons ...

There were a few other scenes in the middle ... Snow White, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins ... then Cinderella. First up were the mice, which (based on reaction) led us all to believe that we needn't have spent hours and hours rehearsing, all we needed to do to inspire the audience was be very very small, dress in something with ears, and simply show up on the night ...
Our ballroom scene followed ... that's me in the middle at the back in the tail-coat with my partner in the purple dress to the right. We didn't have enough boys for all the girls to dress as girls (despite the pressure put on the local boys ice hockey team !!!) and, seeing as I have short hair, it made more sense for me to be a boy than it did for my partner. I'd also like to point out that I was a damned sight warmer than she was (it's a little hard to wear thermals under a strapless ballgown !!!!) ...
Then it was back to the dressing room to prepare S for her final scene ... 101 Dalmatians ...
Just enough time to pose for the camera again before they were back on the ice ...
And then the big finale, where we all skated back out again and took our bows. At first we thought it would be fun to take a mouse with us, I mean, they're small and cute, right ? We had a defective mouse who couldn't skate very well (OK, OK, so she was only five) and kept falling down. It wasn't until later I found out that she was actually an expert, but enjoyed the "one, two, three ... swing !!!" thing that small children do when in between two adults !!!!!
And the highlight of the night ? Another mouse looking curiously at me and asking "Are you supposed to be a boy ?" At first I thought it was cute and said "Yes, we didn't have enough boys" ... but I stopped thinking it was cute right about the time she continued with "Is that cos you're not pretty enough to be a girl ?"

It was exhausting, but exhilerating ... and I can't wait for next year !!!

Where to start ?

I thought I would just quickly pop in this quick post to show you the reason for my latest absence (these are becoming increasingly frequent ... don't you just hate it when your life gets in the way of your blogging ?)

Seven am rehearsals are not my favourite things. We've spent seven of the last eight evenings at the rink. We were seriously considering taking sleeping bags and moving in. But the Ice Show was a spectacular success and we all had a total blast !!!

The MOTH has taken heaps of cute photos of the rugrats (and a couple of not so cute of me) ... but I'm too tired to sort through them all at the moment. So go amuse yourself looking at the following website ...

http://www.seenindunedin.co.nz/events/live_shows.html

(Apologies ... I'm too tired even to try and link properly)