It's all over but the cryin'

Well, it's time for my reflection our Christmas holiday and I'm having a hard time coming up with something original to say. Just like all of you, we spent weeks preparing and decorating and baking and singing and celebrating and then in just a few hours, it was over. The fact that I only have 5 more vacation days left of what has been a G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S time of rest and relaxation only adds to the post-yuletide letdown. Nevertheless, here is a look back at what transpired.

Christmas Eve was spent with Handiman's family. We ate an early dinner and settled in to listen to our annual Christmas story reading. For the first time in Wood family history the three grandchildren can all read so we let them take turns. I'm not sure Tyler, who is 13, was all that thrilled about reading out of a baby book with the two girls but I give him props for going through with it.

After the story it was time to watch the kids open their gifts. Per usual, the Ocho came away with quite a haul. The big-ticket item this year was a Hannah Montana Karaoke machine complete with a video camera that projects your image onto the TV screen. I think you all know who was most excited about that present. : )

The shocker of the evening was RubyDooby giving Papa Gator a Wii. Handiman, Uncle Drew, the Ocho and I had an intense and highly competitive bowling competition but eventually relented and allowed Papa to play with it. After all, it is the season of giving.

We rushed home to get ready for bed, put cookies and milk out for Santa and some carrots out for the reindeer. Then it was off to bed for the Ocho. I may or may not have stayed up to do a little karaokeing. I can't recall.

The next morning we awoke to find Santa had left some goodies in our stockings and a few presents for the Ocho under the tree. The old man proved to be fallible this year however. It seems the Build-A-Bear DS game she asked for was defective. This was disappointing for several reasons, not the least of which was that it was the only toy she had asked for. I eventually convinced her that Santa had a deal with our local Target and we could exchange it for a new one. (I won't even get into how the new one was defective too and I searched in 4 different stores the day after Christmas for another one and couldn't find it. She finally settled for a different game. Honestly, the quality of work done by Santa's elves these days just isn't what it used to be.)

After listening to her cry a while over the game, Handiman and I decided to cheer her up by popping "Breaking Free" into the karaoke machine and dazzling her with our duet stylings.

Later that day we headed to my parent's house for Christmas dinner and gifts. We also took along our new Karaoke machine. Not to be outdone on the noise factor, my parents gifted the Ocho with a Sharpay sing-along barbie doll. She comes with a microphone and you can sing "I Want it All" with her. And by you, I mean your daughter. Because she's probably already sick of listening to you sing into her karaoke machine and refuses to let you play with the sing-along barbie now.

That didn't matter. I simply popped a Christmas karaoke CD into the machine and we took turns belting out carols and watching ourselves on the big screen.

And then it was over.

It came and went in a flash and now it's time for the decorations to come down and school to start again.

But the good news is there's only 13 weeks until Spring Break!