Quality Christmas Time

Where to begin... just a couple phrases might help you imagine: flickin hippos, mini pie hole, whoa man and shakin' booty. In a nutshell, fambly, ya' gotta love my fambly.

We had a perfect Christmas (except that we were short one family and a Mom), but the time we had together was great and we all laughed until our sides hurt.

And it has come full circle!!! Our daughter, Tiffany told me that "whoa man," is really irritating. THANK YOU!! You know, that really, really iritating saying from, So, I Married an Axe Murderer. Can you picture the hand... whoa.... man. yes, really irritating if you hear it every day, all day. It begins to wear on your nerves and you know you've become your parents because you have no tolerance for something that is hip and trendy. That saying (and accompanying action) used to drive me nuts, and now, it's driving Tiff nuts too. HA! So there!

Malan spent the night and entertained us with her booty dance. Sorry, Chris, I know it's your goal to keep your daughter off the pole, but I'm thinking it's too late for an intervention.
I took Malan and Ari to Target. They each got $30 and they shopped for an hour. Then they actually played, and played, and played with the same toys for hours. Here's a conversation:

Malan: We're having fun.
Ari: Yep.
Malan: I like playing with toys I like, not like the toys I got for Christmas that I don't like.

And another:

Ari: See my monkey? His name is Bobby Jack.
Malan: Bobby Jack has a mini pie hole.

And another:
Ari: When we were at the party, we didn't know each other, but now we know each other, so now we're friends.
Malan: Yep.

Simply beautiful.

We learned to play Hula Hippos. It's a 3+ game, so Kristin and I were able to figure out the instructions. Spin the hoop, flick your hippos, hope the hoop stops on your hippos. Flickin hippos is a fine art. It's also a term of endearment (as in, "I want to flick your hippo,") and it makes a really great cuss word (as in, "Darren is a flickin' hippo for flickin" all those hippos.") It's a very useful phrase that you'll be hearing a lot more in 2009.

And my Chrsitmas vacation ends with work, which I did and am still doing even though I was going to take 10 days off. Thank you CB for the flexibility to work from home. Thank you ADP for allowing me to hone my project management skills all year long, right to the very end.