Post Christmas musings

[scaeagles]

A random list of thoughts/observations/frustrations:

My children are growing. My youngest is learning to share, my middle is discovering that giving is better than receiving, and my eldest is learning that helping her two younger siblings is rewarding just because it's a good thing to do.

How can a game called Super Monkey Ball be so addicting? My kids have had a gamecube for a couple years. For Christmas they got Super Monkey Ball. I played that thing for about 6 hours into all hours of the night by myself because I had to get to the next level. I was so addicted that today I went and bought (I said it was for my kids, but my wife knew who I was buying it for) Super Monkey Ball II. And some eye drops.

How is it possible that companies can come up with the packaging they do? Some of my kids toys took longer to unpackage than they will ever play with them. Tied down, sealed plastic, screwed to the package, you name it.

Nostalgia is a great thing. I got an Atari 2600 throwback game system with all the original games programmed in. Love it.

Having an anniversary on Dec 17 sucks. I shot my wad (monetarily speaking) on making our anniversary extra special, so I couldn't afford to buy my wife anything extra special for Christmas.

We have children older than my wife's brothers do. When ours were younger and they had no kids (or weren't married), they knew everything about kids and how to raise them and make them behave, etc, and they were sure quick to let us know when they thought we weren't doing a good job. Seeing them struggle with unruly and/or spoiled and/or (insert negative child adjective here), it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Not a very nice thing to admit to, but honest none the less.

My daughter, who will be 12 one week from today, was more excited about new clothes than anything else. Sigh. She is not a kid anymore.

I had an envelope with Christmas receipts. My almost 12 year old get a gift we had also given her, so we were going to return one. Of course, what was the only receipt I could not find?

I have so many more thoughts floating around in my head. What are your Christmas observations?

[wendybeth]

I hear you on the packaging thing- they must lie awake at nights dreaming up new tortuous devices to make freeing the desired object from it's paper and plastic prison even more difficult. I mean- sewing the doll's hair to the box? Wtf? Bastards.

Our Christmas went fairly well- I think most everyone got what they wanted and if they didn't too bad. After breathing a sigh of relief at having survived both mentally and economically, I get in my car today and lo and behold! Damned brakes are screwed up. Not the front, 'cause those were just replaced last month. I realise my car is at 100,000 miles, but on a Honda that's supposed to be a halfway point. Just when I think there is nothing left to fix, something new pops up. So, I am thinking I need to go car shopping, because I am not putting another damned cent in that beast!

My girl is growing up as well, although she still likes her American Girl stuff, so she got a new doll and some jammies that match her doll's. I suspect that this may be the last Christmas for dollies. (Although, when I think of how much they cost, that may not be a bad thing...)

[€uroMeinke]

It was an odd Christmas this year. Our focus has been on New Years, so a lot of Christmas got overlooked. We did cards this year, but I think the effort that went into that prevented us from doing much more. All our decorations reamined in the garage - and while we've often picked up trees at the last minute, this year we had none.

Instead, we've been working on the house in other ways, redoing our laundry area, reconfiguring our office space, etc.

Heck we barely got to the park to see the decorations this year, we're going to have to dust off our APs for 2006 while they are still good.

[sleepyjeff]

Scrooges' entire workforce got Christmas off....

Scrooges' nephew had servents working on Christmas...

who's the real Scrooge?