Looks like we are only waiting on three ornaments, all mailed internationally. Yay!
In the meantime, does anyone have a funny holiday memory/story to share? (Any winter holiday is fine.)
Here is mine (although I think I may have told it before on the dead site):
One year when our kids were all small, we went to my sister’s house for Christmas. For their big present, my niece and nephew were getting a small bouncy house. On Christmas Eve, we were disappointed to discover that the inflation device didn’t work. What to do, what to do?
We came up with the idea to go to a gas station and use their free tire-inflation air. We weren’t sure it would work, but a few of us took off in a van to give it a try. To our delight, it worked wonderfully well and inflated very quickly. We were thrilled until we tried to put the bouncy house in the van… It didn’t fit!
We ended up driving back to their house at about five miles per hour, a fully-inflated bouncy house on the top of the van, our arms sticking out of windows and doors to hold the thing tight enough to keep it from blowing away. We must have looked very comical to anyone who may have driven past us, and we ourselves were laughing hysterically the whole time.
We had a big family christmas eve, culminating in mysterious thumps, hoofbeats, and bells jingling from the roof. The kids’ eyes got bigger and bigger as the adults discussed what could be happening.
Then my 45-year-old sister loudly announced, “Oh, that’s just Sam and Jim on the roof!”
…and looked around as if expecting praise for solving this weighty puzzle.
My daughter was 6-7 months her first Christmas and up to that point ZERO interest in crawling or tummy time. Until I placed that first wrapped present under the tree. Her tiny face lit up with absolute glee and this previously sedentary child suddenly slithered and army crawled her way to that tree and proceeded to rip up every bit of wrapping paper she could get her tiny hands on.
The next day she full out crawled to the tree and attacked the newly wrapped presents. We had to move the tree to a corner and put a dog gate in front to protect the presents. Christmas morning she was a positive fiend attacking her presents and ours when that gate finally came down. I’m not sure she’s ever loved any present as much as she loved her wrapping paper apocalypse that first year.
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AIMR
(Linda -In the year 2025, I am happy to be alive! :us:)
204
We were in Turkey one Christmas, living in the city of Ankara. Since it is mostly a Muslim country, it was nearly impossible to get a tree and artificial trees had already been bought out at the military base. I was about 9. My sister and brother were 8 and 5.
My dad took a string of lights and shaped it into a tree on a window and my mom placed all of our presents underneath the window.
We have had a lot of trees, but that light tree stands out in my memory.
Great stories! I also have a Thanksgiving one. Shortly after my sister got married and moved into a small house, she and her husband (who was a professional chef at one point) invited everyone to Thanksgiving dinner. They went all-out, and the main dish was roast goose.
Most of us were chatting in the living room, when we heard a commotion in the kitchen. The goose had been “resting” just before carving, when the host turned his back for a few minutes. It was just long enough for the couple’s two cats to jump up on the table and drag the goose off, onto the floor and then down the hall at full speed! The cats had never jumped on the table before; they just must really have wanted that goose.
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AIMR
(Linda -In the year 2025, I am happy to be alive! :us:)
206
We had duck for Thanksgiving…my cats were doing everything they could to get a piece…if we were not watching, they would have grabbed it and run…they never get on the table. I hope you guys used the six second rule and cleaned up the goose to eat it yourselves! ha ha ha
When i was a wee kid, 5 & under, every Christmas I would get horrific ear infections. One year I was so sick I didn’t even want to open presents!
I was laying on the couch, miserable, hating the world, when I heard …. Moo.
???
MOOOO.
?!?
Moo moo mooooooooo moo moo!
I sat up to discover that my big present that year was the Fisher Price barn! And my brothers were playing with the barn doors, making them moooo, trying to entice me to come play with them. It worked! For about 20 minutes until I went back to the couch to be miserable again. But I still fondly remember that sound of the barn doors…
Aw, you poor thing! It was nice of your brothers to try to get you to join in the fun. Great photo, too…Although your oldest brother doesn’t seem to have as much Christmas cheer as the rest of you! (Assume he received the chess set?)
Forgot to post a Funny holiday story. One year we managed to lose our sanity enough to have 2 Scottish terriers just out of puppyhood. Anything in the floor was obviously a challenger or obstacle to those dervishes, even the carpet. After eyeballing the removable limbs for the tree and calculating all the places those needles could lodge, we decided creativity might be in order. We needed something big, heavy, somewhat indestructible, and not on the ground. The front porch held our champion!
Years earlier, my grandmother rescued a pothos ivy down to it’s last leaf. It thrived and became a trellised potted plant larger that I was. The pot rested on a painted cast iron stool and the trellis branched out about 3 get wide. Through a true family effort we managed to park the ivy right over the hole where the terriers had had found even the carpet pad to be offensive to their canine sensibilities and dug it up. A giant bow was put at the very top, with a single strand of lights and ribbons loosely tacked on. After living through ornaments, we selected a few that seemed least likely to break or harm any of us and felt thrilled to have solved that problem. Gifts were hung on the coat tree out ivy if light enough. Larger and heavier gifts replaced the knickknacks on shelves. As an added benefit, the anole that lived in the ivy (as we found out a few days later) enjoyed the much more temperate winter but stayed on the festive plant. It was a year for the memory books! The Scotties were happy to have something new to bark at and we were thrilled to not worry about constantly cleaning up synthetic pine needles.
We had a cat that loved the christmas tree. He stared at it from across the room, nestled in among the gifts, gazed up into the branches… I wound up putting extra padding under the tree skirt, so he could sleep there.
My story is about Thanksgiving. I was born and spent my early childhood in Germany. My Dad was in the military, but both my parents are German and spoke it fluently so we didnt live on base.
My birthday is very close to Thanksgiving. When i was a kid, i always just assumed it was a big birthdays celebration for me because we always had my cake and presents then, and i always ate first.
When we moved to the US, my sister and i thought it was hilarious that it was an actual holiday. We thought it was just a joke our parents told us.
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AIMR
(Linda -In the year 2025, I am happy to be alive! :us:)
216
I didn’t know that about you! I also spent three years in Germany…my brother was born there.
Loving everyone’s stories! We are putting up the tree today. Here are all my Lettuce-Crafter gifted ornaments (combination of this swap, Ongoing Ornament Swap, and STS.) Thanks to those of you who crafted for me, and an extra shout out to @steiconi and @Tapestry who gifted me some extras!
They may not all stay together like this, but I wanted to gather them up for a photo. (Sorry if I left anybody’s out of the picture. Tried to keep them together, but I’m not super-organized!)
We are still waiting on a couple of international deliveries; I’m giving those until November 30.
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Lynx
(In a world where you can be anything, be kind.)
218
So cool. My kids started hanging ornaments before I could take an action shot together, but all mine from this swap and the Ongoing Ornament swap from this year are up. I have so many ornaments now that they can’t all hang. Need a bigger house and more trees!
My family makes fun of me, because no matter how many ornaments there are, I put them ALL on the tree. (We have just one tree.) They say you can barely see the tree for all the ornaments on it! I love a crowded tree.
Well, it looks like we may need an angel for @Dfabbric. I thought I’d ask here first, if anyone is interested; will post in the angel-call topic tomorrow. Let me know if you are interested in being a swap angel. (@Dfabbric is in Canada.)
This has been such a great swap; wish we could control the postal/shipping companies!
But I still fondly remember that sound of the barn doors…
