On the First Day of Christmas

....my true love gave to me.

If I were really clever, I'd try to follow up on that. Clever, or perhaps annoying, take your pick.

Here goes...

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me....(and already this has become misrepresntational, since I'm making a list up about my family's Christmas and not about the gifts I personally received. Hey, this is my blog, and Sweetling isn't even here to try to keep me on task, so nyah and all.)

....a large tub of Heggy's hot fudge.

....two fuzzy webkinz, (two that I personally received, the kids got five more. Not five more each. Just five more in general.)

...three (and a half) hours at COSI (ok, maybe four, but I've already got something in the four slot, see?)

...four brand new Wii games (Mario Galaxy, Paper Mario, Wii Music, and Mario Smash Bros)

....five days in Canton (Tuesday the 23rd through Saturday the 27th)

....six Christmas dances (in our annual Christmas Reflections program. I'm not cool enough to know how to put any of them on YouTube, so don't ask.)

...seven long-time friends (whom we visited in Canton. Counting their children would make it 19, but that doesn't fit in the song now, does it?)

...eight loads of laundry (the last load is in the dryer now. How is it we can generate more laundry when we are gone for a week than when we are home for a week? That makes no earthly sense. Even Einstein himself would be baffled by this one. Oh, and I think the spin cycle on my washer is dying. It certainly isn't draining.)

...nine sets of jammies. (Sadly, none of them are for me. And two of them we still have to find. I spent hours, literally hours, getting run around at Walmart cause they *had* Mario jammies in a size for Toa of Boy, but not for Sweetling. The store that I was at called another store, who said they had them in the Sweetling's size and would hold them for me at the fitting rooms. I drove to that store, and guess what? No jammies in the fitting room. No jammies in her size on the rack. No jammies at the customer service desk, no jammies in the back. No jammies at the walmart down the street, so the call wasn't made to the wrong store. No jammies, no jammies, no jammies anywhere. In the meantime, we lost Toa of Boy's "Tigger" cat webkinz. I called all the Walmarts when we got home, but they couldn't find Tigger either.)

...ten bags for co-op. (We're beginning our research paper. I want them to do the actual research over Christmas break. Yes, I am that evil, thank you. But, I had a twinge of guilt, so I thought, I'll make them research goodie bags. And yes, I'm also that much of a dork. I put a candy cane pen, a happy holiday's pencil, a baggie of M&M cookies, a pouch of hot chocolate mix, and 50 colored index cards--ten in each of five colors--in each bag. They were happy with the bags, and surprisingly excited about doing a research paper.)

...eleven and 12 more cupcakes. (Yeah, I had nothing for this number. I did bake 23 cupcakes for the "Happy Birthday Jesus" party the pre-school and kindergarteners had a church. This is really only significant because Toa of Boy was doing a count down to this party all during December. He wasn't counting down to Christmas; he was counting down to this party.)

...twelve dozen and more cookies. (Really, I lost track of how many dozens upon dozens upon dozens upon dozens of cookies I made. More this year than any other year for sure. I put the cookies in this slot cause it was the biggest number in the song. Just so you know, I baked a lot of cookies.)

AND,

....many, many paid vacation days for the Jedi. He has been off every Friday since the Friday before Thanksgiving, plus from December 19th through Jan 4th. Hooray!