Happennings, and a great phone call out of the blue...

It's been a while since I last wrote, and since I'm not Meredith, calm down...no awesome pictures this time. I will, however, throw in this picture of a trout.

OK...having accomplished that, things have been crazy busy around here lately. I recently took a new job at work that requires me to travel. Fortunately the travel isn't every week, but when I do have to travel, it's generally over several days, which is a bit of a bummer. I'm also finishing up my semester of classes. I know you're not supposed to say this, but I am SO SICK of school. It may be great and all when you do it for a living, but it's hard when you've got church and work and a great family and a lot of video games.

So anyway, we've just been getting ready for the holidays. As a note, I think it's important that I talk about a couple of ornaments on our tree. Every year, we get a couple of Hallmark Keepsake ornaments for our tree. We like them because they're generally very topical (i.e., they feature relevant subjects from the year), and they provide us a neat way to remember each year. This year we struggled with what to get. We narrowed it down to Little Einsteins, which Ella has recently become a big fan of, or WALL-E, as the first movie Ella ever saw in a theater (she technically saw it 1.75 times, since Ella and I attempted it once alone, and as you can see, didn't make it all the way through). We decided on WALL-E, but they were all sold out, so we ended up getting Little Einsteins (that ornament, by the way, was the best worst idea ever...they sing the theme song, so I now have it memorized). Meredith was driving down the street one snowy day and saw a Hallmark, and she found WALL-E! Needless to say, we were all thrilled.

OK...so other than that, this Christmas holiday I had been having a good time and all, but I hadn't really gotten into the "Christmas spirit." We aren't going to be able to travel to see family this year, so this marks the first time since I was in Brazil that I'm not with some extended family on that day. Now I would like to think that I have a pretty good sense about the Christ part of things, so I don't consider myself to be off on that side, but I just wasn't getting into the holiday mood, despite the songs, etc. Well, this morning, I was working through schoolwork preparing for my Final on Monday (I've watched about 5 hours of classes since Wednesday...one more hour to go, plus reading), and since Meredith is visiting family with Gabriella, was feeling kind of low. Then I got a phone call.

It was Santa.

He told me that he could tell that I needed some cheer, and that he needed some help working out what to get Gabriella and Meredith. He invited me to come shop with him a bit, and pick some stuff out. I accepted.

We decided to take my car, since he said that the sleigh is not discreet enough for this time of year (everybody's looking for him these days), and my car met spec, since it was red and had plenty of ReinDeerPower (RDP).

We spent a couple of hours looking around and having a good time. Incidentally, Santa had forgotten his credit card back at the North Pole (other pants or something), so we had to use mine. We got back, he thanked me for the help, and left. I looked in my bags, and found a copy of "Twas the Night Before Christmas", just like the one my dad read to me when I was a kid.

While we were shopping, holiday cheer hit me like a ton of bricks. Santa had told me that since I had travelled so much for Christmas in the past, that he hadn't really needed my help, but that this year, since I have such a good wife and daughter (they were at the top of the nice list, he told me--I didn't ask where I was), he needed my help to pick out just the right things.

When I was a kid, I could hardly wait for Christmas morning to come, to see what Santa had brought me. Us kids would bargain with my parents for a reasonable time to get up. Now, just so you know, this is not reasonable reasonable. This is Christmas reasonable, which means it was the latest we kids thought we could go without exploding from excitement (usually around 4:30 am). Realizing that my Dad has been getting these calls from Santa for quite a few years now, I figured out that my Dad was never campaigning for later. Just like me, he will campaign for 4:30 am this year.

Just so he doesn't explode with excitement.

After all, you only get to help Santa once a year.