Rewind - December

So much has happened in the past few months it's hard to know where to start, but I'll do my best. I think I'll recap from Christmas on...

First of all, we did this which was super cool and fun!

Joe and I practiced with Goose, and she practiced at school in music class, for weeks and weeks to get ready for her big kindergarten Christmas pageant. When the day finally came, she looked adorable in her Princess Leia angel costume. And it's a good thing she did look good because that's ALL she didn't sing a single song. Not a one. All that work and she stood up on stage and messed around. Goes to show what I've always known - kids really are tiny little people, and sometimes they're tiny little asshole people who make you feel like a moron for wasting hours helping them. Ahhh, she's really growing up.

Don't worry - once it was all over I of course hugged and kissed her and told her she was a brat for not singing asked her if she had fun on stage (she really did).

Somewhere around the beginning of the month the landlord trapped himself in our garage because he's a stingy bastard. (I'm onery today, sorry). The man absolutely refuses to have a professional do anything he (thinks) he can do himself. So when our garage door finally died (after warning him it would many times) he decided the best way to get in was to CUT through one of the roll up panels. Once inside, the other panels rolled down and trapped him in the garage, as though they were exacting some kind of revenge upon him. I SWEAR I did not voodoo curse the garage door, but I was delighted concerned to hear he was trapped. He eventually freed himself and hired a guy to come out. Of course, the guy was the cheapest guy he could possibly find so a four hour repair job took three weeks. In the meantime our garage was all boarded up like an abandoned house in a ghost town. We klassy like dat.

It wouldn't have been a big deal except that the kids' gifts from Santa Claus and some gifts for other people, as well as the girls' Christmas outfits were likewise trapped in the garage, along with our washer, dryer, dirty clothes, wet clean clothes, and a variety of supplies we use on a regular basis. Nevermind. There is no scenario in which not having access to our shit for three damn weeks wasn't a big deal.

Come Christmas Eve day, we realized two things: 1) we had to get our stuff out of the garage TODAY, and 2) oops-we hadn't taken the girls to see Santa yet (we were waiting a while because she had already been traumatized once by an unauthorized, but well-meaning visit with Joe's mom and sister).

We raced down to the local mall, stood in line for-fucking-ever and got this taken:

(Pickle was in Santa's lap for like four seconds, don't go flipping out or anything)

Joe actually broke into our own garage on Christmas Eve and stole all the presents out of there in a reverse-Santa move. And, in saint-like fashion, he stayed up all night drinking wine putting together Goose's new dollhouse, while I stayed up a lot of the night drinking wine wrapping and baking and child-wrangling.

The kidlets totally dug their gifts:

We rung in the new year with some hilarious and wonderful friends, the Kurtz family, who generously donated a massive amount of bottle rockets and other explodables for our midnight amusement.

Sayonara 2010