Holidays, 2010

Well, another holiday season has come and gone. I hope we all feel better for it.

For me, the time off started on December 23rd. Nothing much to mention. I did take Ellie out to lunch with me once. Evidently, I got her on an emotional day. I was rooting around looking for money and Ellie asked me if I needed to borrow some money from her. I chuckled and mentioned it to Tracy. That wasn’t the thing to say. She started to cry, thinking I was making fun of her request. So, that didn’t start the lunch date well. We went to our local high-brow Taco Bell and I made the fatal mistake of ordering for her. She liked tacos, so I ordered a gordita. All it really is is a thicker taco. That was the next big mistake of the day. So, my alone time with my little girl really turned into a cry fest. Yep. Great way to bond with the girl.

Christmas eve the kids got to open one present. They were pajamas all around. Tracy was making plans to wake up early on Christmas morning to make her family’s traditional cinnamon rolls. Well, the dough didn’t rise well and when she finally did get them cooked, they were overdone. Presents were good. I don’t think we went overboard. Bennet got his toy vacuum cleaner. Hayden got an erector set. Ellie got a real live sewing machine. Madsen got Zhu Zhu pets. They all received a DVD movie and pillow pets. Tracy got her new camera and I got a few DVDs with Truman G. Madsen. We had finally replaced our stereo of 21 years earlier and we needed to get some new beds, so Tracy and I didn’t get much for each other. For some reason, I got some very B-movie zombie DVDs. That was kind of amusing.

And I never have gotten by the irony of honoring an observant jew’s birth with ham.

The next week was filled with work. On Friday, a day I had asked off, I had to work on a database issue. Working on that prompted a database failure on Saturday, New Year’s day. In anticipating an irate customer, I worked on Sunday to make sure data was available for a report run the following week. Monday, another database alarm prompted me to work again, deleting data and sending a notification. Worked on every day of the holiday.

New year’s eve was pretty nice. We had cheese fondue with bread, broccoli, carrots and sausages. After that we had chocolate fondue with bananas, strawberries, cookies and marshmallows. So we were full and all sugared up. Ellie and Hayden actually made it to midnight. Ellie was pretty punchy though. She had never stayed up that late before.

For a final push of the holidays, Gina babysat the kids and Tracy and I went out and bought some “practice fish” for the kids. Not sure if they will last all that long, but it will be an interesting experiment. Hayden has taken good care of our parakeet, so I’m hoping that will translate to the other kids. Actually, it has been so long since Tracy and I have done much without kids in tow, it is odd to be without them, and we find it difficult to make up our minds in what to do. I wonder if that is what empty-nesters experience.

One other thing that happened is a little conference with Tracy. We need to get the kids reading more. So, I went downstairs and took down the boxes of books that I’ve been keeping since I was young. I kept them for my kids, and that time has finally arrived. I kept some really good books. I hope Hayden can get interested in them.