La Vida Loca De Flores

After the crazy flurry of activity after Thanksgiving, the "peace" of Christmas Eve had finally arrived. I love the feeling on Christmas Eve...all the shopping is done (and even if it isn't there are no stores open to get anything else!), the house is clean (because if it isn't, Santa Claus won't come in...my mom taught me that one!), and everyone is relaxed...ahhh...oh, wait NO ONE is relaxed...the kids are touching every present trying to see if they could "guess" what's inside, the little boys are asking me every 10 minutes..."Is it time to open our presents yet?" Because it is our tradition to open one gift on Christmas Eve, it is pajamas and everyone knows it, yet they are always excited to see and put on their new jammies. This year was no exception, everyone was excited to open their PJ's and officially get Christmas under way at our house. This year, I found the cutest little PJ sets at Walmart that came in a cute little backpack with PJ's, slippers, toothbrush, and a little mini flashlight, Buzz Lightyear for Kolt and Transformers for Jett. These choices seemed a little too juvenile for Blaze so I just glanced over to the next kiosk and noticed a bunch of more "mature" looking sets of the same type with video game themes on them, sizes S, M, L, and XL.. I thought "Great, Blaze will love this..." not too immature, but still a unique PJ set. So Christmas Eve came and both little boys absolutely LOVED their PJ's, slippers, toothbrushes, and flashlights, Sierra loved her soft L.e.i. jammie bottoms, and at first sight Blaze was VERY happy with his "Modern Warfare" PJ set... until....he pulled the pajamas out of the bag....they were MEN'S size XL!!! Oh my gosh! I couldn't believe it...at first I felt so bad, mostly because I felt like he was disappointed, but then I got a bit mad...I mean REALLY!!!...do wives/mothers/girlfriends really buy a pajama sets in a backpack with video game themes!?! Honestly, and the kiosk was RIGHT NEXT to the ones for the little guys, so why would I not assume that they were for older boys and not grown men! Come on!!

Luckily, Blaze was a very good sport and I know how to sew...so on Christmas Eve, when I should have been relaxing, I was frantically altering a pair of men's XL pajama bottoms to fit my 11 year old boy!

Christmas morning came full of surprises and some "not so surprises..." Sierra got her much-wished-for-watched-me-buy-it-online coat from American Eagle, which looks totally cute on her (She's a SUPER model!!). All the kids asked for Santa to bring Wii, which he did, along with Wii Fit Plus...woo hoo...totally fun!!

For Blaze this year, Mike and I had decided to get him a 22 rifle. He loves the outdoors, fishing, hiking, camping, and really enjoyed doing some rabbit and coon hunting with his cousins last year. However, Blaze is probably the biggest "Gift Detective" of all of our kids and unfortunately is very good at it, and honestly, even a very bad "Gift Detective" would recognize the size and shape of a gun wrapped in a box...(not to mention the fact that he spied Mike checking out guns one day while we were out shopping and wasn't very subtle about the fact that he believed that was what he was getting for Christmas!)...and so the deception began! Of course, we did not wrap up the gun, as it would have taken him about a tenth of a second to figure out what it was. As the days grew closer to Christmas, I kept hearing the question.."Have you done all the shopping?" or "Have you wrapped up all the gifts?"...and I kept saying yes.

On Christmas Eve, I wrapped the key to the lock on the gun case and taped a string to the bottom of the package, then ran the string from under the Christmas tree behind the couch and to the other end of the room to the coat closet, and tied it to the gun case and put it behind all the coats! It was so funny on Christmas morning when he opened up that key and then found that there was a string attached to his gift...and not only Blaze was excited about seeing what was at the end of the string. All the kids were following him around and very anxious to see what was in the back of the closet!

Needless to say he loved the gun, and the surprise!...and now he is anxiously waiting for his Hunter's Safety course to begin so that he can get his small game license this next winter...I just hope he doesn't ever want me to cook his little rabbits....ick!!