Mele Kalikimaka

My youngest daughter turned eight last week.  Having a birthday close to Christmas can be kind of a bummer.  We always go out of our way to make it special.

This year she wanted to have a bowling party, but we waited too long to book it and two weeks out they were booked solid.  So instead we decided to have a party at home.  With the weather taking a turn for the frigid, we hosted a Luau.  It was really cute.  I had a dozen second graders in my house all wearing grass skirts, flower leis, and flower ring on their heads.  They did the limbo, some beach ball games, and pin the coconut on the palm tree.  We did kind of tie in the holiday season, though.  Instead of a birthday cake, Gillian opted for a huge sheet sugar cookie.  We cut it into segments, picked up some of that squeeze frosting, and let the kids decorate and eat their own cookies.  That was a LOT of frosting, believe me.

I’m sure it was a bit of a shock to leave our house and step out into temps in the teens and snow.  The kids all had a blast… and I’ll be picking up pieces of dried grass out of my carpet for weeks.

(Mele Kalikimaka – Merry Christmas in Hawaiian)

Waiting Patient-ly

I went in for my annual physical with my doctor yesterday.  Is there anything more frustrating than going to the doctors office and waiting for EVER!  If YOU are five minutes late, God help you.  But if you show up on time or even early… get ready for some quality alone time.

I had an appointment at 1:00pm yesterday.  I arrived at 12:45pm.  It was 1:30 before the nurse came to get me.  She took my weight, blood pressure and left me to sit in the examination with the normal paper toga.  Almost a full FORTY FIVE MINUTES LATER, the doctor comes in.  After about two minutes of “how are you feeling?”, the nurse comes in and tells her she has a phone call.  Terrific, another 10 minutes of reading ancient magazines in a paper toga.  Good thing they took my blood pressure early, because I’m thinking it was pretty hopping by this point.

As for the physical, my doctor was pleasantly surprised that I’d dropped 30 pounds, but still wants me to get more exercise.  I go in for some routine bloodwork later this week.  The doctor asked if I’d been fasting, but I said no.  I didn’t know I was supposed to?!?  My wife says that I’m old now and should just expect that every time. 

Nice.

Scrooge… me?

Every year I take grief from Jesse because I have a fake tree.  I blogged about it around this time last year where I detailed some of the reasons I don’t get a real tree.

This year I just want to point out that I am not alone and that many people who are not (as has been said on our show) “scrooges, shut-in’s, or old” still prefer the beauty and convenience of an artificial tree.

Here’s some excerpts of a recent CBS news article about the rise in popularity of artificial Christmas trees:
“Some would recoil at the thought of an artificial tree, but it’s a choice that many Americans make. Traditionalists love real trees for their scent, and some people like cutting their own tree. But artificial trees leave no needles to clean up and come in a variety of styles and colors. Prelit Christmas trees, which come with the lights already on them, are very popular.

Buying a Christmas tree is practically like buying a car, what with all the options. [Like] an upside-down corner tree and a half tree that can be used as a space saver. Some trees are made out of polyvinyl chloride.

Prelit trees also come with a variety of lights: white, colored, two-tone, fiber optic, and LEDs, or light emitting diodes. Some lights look like pinecones with melting snow.

There are also the trees that don’t try to hide their fakeness, like tinsel tree and ice crystal tree.

Certainly the artificial trees are fast and easy — two qualities Americans look for in everything. More than half the Christmas trees displayed in our homes this year will be artificial.”

If doing the real tree forest trek is your thing… that’s cool.  I’ll be sitting in my living room – with the tree already done – watching Jimmy Stewart on TV and drinking hot chocolate.

Ho Ho Ho!