Tradition!

There are Christmas traditions, and then there are Christmas Traditions.

Of all the traditions I've heard about, from putting out milk and cookies for Santa, to observing the twelve days of Christmas, I think, possibly that my family's traditions are the most eclectic.

It all starts on Christmas Eve. This year all my little sisters could think of was Christmas Eve. This Christmas Eve, at 8am both of my little sisters were running up and down the hall screaming, "Merry Christmas!" (from Mary Asta) and "Mewwy Chistmas!!" (from Lily Ava). As Lily Ava followed me down the stairs to breakfast she shouted "Mewwy Chistmas!" and being the benevolent older sister I am, I reminded her, "It's Christmas Eve, Lily Ava." She corrected herself. "Mewwy Chistmas Eve! Ho ho ho!"

The reason for their excitement is because, according to Norweigan Tradition, our family opens presents under the tree on Christmas Eve night. We open our stockings that Santa has filled on Christmas morning. It's tradition. On Christmas Eve night, we go to the Christmas Eve service and then come home have dessert, and after dessert, we all gather around the piano (which is preferably close to the Christmas Tree) and according to tradition we sing several Christmas Carols. We gather with hymn books that my mom has collected and we sing. It's torture. There are presents under the tree that are just begging to be opened. We finally sit down and open the presents. It's fun.

Christmas morning, Santa (or Daddy) has put out and filled our stockings. Normally we have lots weird stocking stuffers. Enough said.

That's not the only weird thing. Our food is kinda funny too. We have fish for Christmas Eve dinner. For Christmas Eve dinner, we start with dessert. We normally have dinner right about 2, 2:30 pm. We start with rice pudding. If you find an Almond in yours, you get a candy pig. It's wonderful. Then we have fish. Normally some Norwegian type. It's really rather interesting. Yay Fish.

Now it's your turn. What are your weird Christmas traditions? Can you beat mine?

Merry Christmas!
Hana

Of Mayhem, Mutiny and Mondays-that-could-be-better

I've had enough.

These past two days are enough to make me want to retire from the world. I'll live in my own little world. It's ok, I know they'll like me there.

Yesterday was amazing. If you've ever wondered what a Monday is supposed to be like, well, read this and you'll soon know what.

Plane tickets. All I can say is be careful whose name they're in. They're a pain. I had to spend lots of money. Yay. This was before 10am.

After 10am, I felt ready to go back to bed. Our family cars are on the fritz, and never more so then yesterday. It was one string of bad news after the other, it seemed, right up until about 12 noon. And after that it started looking up.

The entire day I felt like my eyelids were going to close on me for good.

Then today, I got up at 4:40 am to work from 5:15 till 12 noon.

I'm a lifeguard. There is this thing called a drop test. The insurance agency we've hired requires these. They're stupid. A lap swimmer drops a flag in the water, surreptitiously. The lifeguard on the stand has 10 seconds to spot it, and 10 seconds to retrieve it. Only one person has passed it. We're supposed to do it every day. After the first five or six days, no one could find the stupid flags. I found them this morning. We have splash buckets in the play pool that are about 7 feet off the bottom of the pool. They fill with water and overturn on the little tykes. Someone had hidden the flags in the splash buckets. They all fell out when I turned the buckets on. One of them got stuck. We hid them again. Elsewhere. Yes, it's insubordination. Yes, it's mutiny.

Yes, my week will be and IS full of Mayhem.

Merry Christmas!

Freedom?

I've now gone three whole days without a splint on my middle finger. The feeling is glorious, the freedom amazing, the pain--not so much. While the bone is healed, the jam is not. Yay 6 week splint. Good new, I can play instruments. Bad news, I still feel like my finger's going to give out on me and twinge unpleasantly at any moment. Oh well. How do the french say it? Oh yeah. C'est la vie! Such is life.

Poem addition

You remember the short, silly poem I posted about two down? Yeah, so I scribbled that on the desk I was sitting in. I came back on Thursday and lo and behold, someone had added to it! I was shocked! I added another verse to theirs. So far, we have three verses down.

The hair of my true love is green.
The skin of my true love is blue.
The lips of my true love are bright cherry red,
Altogether a really great hue!

The toes of my true love are thirteen.
The fingers of my true love are nine.
And if asked what my true love looked like,
I'd reply that they simply look fine.

The ears of my true love are round.
The eyes of my true love are gold.
The arms of my true love are pretty and strong,
The strength of them yet still untold.