Christmas Number One

Every year, Laura and I have two Christmases, one at my parents and one at her parents.  This year, we decided to do things with my family a little differently.  We invited my folks and my sister and her husband over to our house for Christmas.  While the day overall went well, the days leading up to it on the other hand won’t go down in history as “The Best Of…”
 
Let me start out by saying that our house will never be on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens.  On a daily basis, Mason will remove all the toys from his toy box and scatter them throughout the house.  It is a challenge just to keep everything picked up.  It feels like a small tornado passes through the house everyday.  I really hate stepping on those sharp little toys with my bare feet.  I do not know how Mason can scatter his wooden blocks across the floor then run across them, OUCH!  I have, on several occasions, stepped on one only to crumple to the floor in agonizing pain.  We needed to do a lot of cleaning before everyone showed up Sunday.  For whatever reason, four days before the big event, “we” decided to paint the dining room to cover up all the crayon that Mason has been adding to the walls (although, if you were to ask Laura, it was all my idea).  As it turned out, not all the crayons were washable.  Oops!  Anyway, as usual with projects around our house, it turned into a bigger job than we anticipated. 
 
An activity that Mason enjoys in his free time is tearing little bits of wallpaper off in the dining room.  Therefore, all the wallpaper needed to be removed before painting.  So the simple task of painting turned into removing wallpaper that was attached with super strength wallpaper adhesive.  It took both Laura and I two days to get it all off.  At this point we have two days left to get the room painted and get the house cleaned.  We started Thursday evening, after Mason went to bed for obvious reasons, priming the walls since we assumed that the wax from the crayons would not allow the paint to stick to the walls very well.  Laura had bought some quick drying primer that was supposed to dry in one hour thinking that we would be able to prime and get the first coat of the final paint on the same night.  That came back to bite us.  After two hours, the primer was still wet!  Silly me, I stayed up until two in the morning waiting for the primer to dry and getting the first coat of paint on the walls. 
 
Friday, Laura spent most of the day cleaning instead of painting because we do not really need painted hand prints of Mason in every room of the house.  So, again after Mason went to bed, we started painting.  Another late night for me.  Nothing like a couple nights in a row with a few hours sleep each to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at work.  Saturday rolls around and we took Mason to the work sponsored children’s Christmas party which took most of the morning.  We still have a lot of cleaning to do and not much time left.  When we get home I start picking up the living and dining rooms putting Mason’s toys back in his toy box for the um-teenth time.  Unfortunately, Mason was more help than I needed.  Each and every toy I put away, he absolutely had to play with and removed each one only to discard it on the floor when the next toy showed up.  One step forward, two steps back.  Laura and I got done cleaning about midnight and I still had to assemble one of Mason’s toys.
 
Laura and I got Mason one of those spring mounted riding horses this year and the directions left a lot to be desired.  Either that or my mental comprehension was severely compromised due to the several days of very little sleep.  It took me like an hour and a half with a bit of cursing to get the stupid thing put together.  The really sad part was it only took eight bolts and two screws.  Not one of my proudest moments.  Yet, another two am bedtime.
 
Sunday morning, Laura and I got up early to get the turkey in the oven and prepare lunch for everyone.  It would be a bit of an understatement to say that Laura and I were both very grumpy.  I was in charge of boiling the eggs and peeling them to make deviled eggs.  A simple task for most people and one that I have done many times before.  I somehow managed to screw it up.  When the eggs cooled down enough to peel, it all went downhill.  The first egg ended up taking most of the white part with the shell, okay, sometimes fresh eggs will do that.  As I continued peeling, each egg got progressively more difficult to peel and my frustration began to increase.  The fourteenth egg broke in half.  That is when I saw that they were not fully cooked.  @%^*!!!!!  I just ruined two dozen eggs!  I usually do not get terribly upset over stuff like that but I think the lack of sleep erased any patience that I may have had.  I head to the living room to cool off a little bit, and there was Mason, taking all the toys out of his toy box…again.  Instead of blowing up at him, I just turned around, walked out to the truck and drove to town for something…anything…it didn’t matter.  While I was gone, Laura boiled more eggs which turned out great.  The difference, she turned the right burner on!  I had turned off the burner to put the eggs in so the boiling water would not splash up on my hands.  I apparently turned the wrong burner back on.  I am going to blame the lack of sleep again; it’s such a convenient excuse.
 
When my folks arrived, they came with lots of presents, many of which were for Mason.  Apparently, one of many benefits to being a grandparent is being able to terribly spoil the grandchild.  The presents got sat down and Mason immediately ran over to the largest one and started ripping the paper off.  After a bit of crying for being told that he would have to wait to open them, he went back to emptying his toy box.  I can only imagine he was thinking, “I will show them by making a huge mess in the middle of the living room”.  
 
After lunch, it was time to open presents.  Last Christmas, Mason was not really old enough to understand that there are toys inside the paper.  This year, however, was a different story.  The first gift that he opened was from my sister and her husband.  It was a large John Deere tractor.  It could not have been a worse gift to start with.  He lost all interest in all the other presents he had sitting in front of him.  That toy had to be played with RIGHT NOW!!  We had to get it out of the box and let him play with it for a while before he would even touch another present.  The next gift was again from my sister and turned out to be a wagon that went with the tractor.  That put an end to opening presents for a while.  Once all the adults finished opening their gifts, I went and got the horse I had worked on assembling so hard the night before.  When Mason saw what I was carrying…“what tractor?”  He immediately climbed on and had a blast.  He did, however, have to take a short break after it bucked him off.  It must have been the saddle because it got removed and he rode bareback.  It was great to see him enjoy it so much.
 
If I didn’t know better, I think Laura invited everyone over for Christmas this year just so she could talk me into painting the dining room.  Laura has told me that I am crazy for even thinking that, but it’s a little hard to believe, especially when she says it with a smirk on her face.