Merry Christmas!! It’s officially the start of Christmas season (before the 25th, it was Advent season).

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

I had the week off this  week.  I turned in the last of my work on Thursday and started on the Couch Gag for the episode on Friday.  It’s actually really difficult.  I was given til Monday of next week to finish it, so first thing Monday, I’ve got to get cracking.

BUT last week I found out, one of my co-worker, Liz Heck, has gotten on Tumbler.  Her plan is to update it two times a week with her own art.

To check it out, CLICK HERE.

BLOGS

As I mentioned last week, my wife Alesha is doing her blog tour this week, with an end of the world theme.  The first post was on post-apocalyptic recipes.  If you have one,  feel free to participate.

I’ve  participated with a different kind of contribution.  I wrote the top three essential things you need, in order to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.  Here’s a sneak peek:

To check out my post CLICK HERE.

And if you leave a comment on there, you have a chance to win a $5 amazon gift certificate.

FAMILY

It was a very busy Christmas. Our family tends to celebrate the 24th AND the 25th.  We usually stay up til midnight on the 24th but this year, with the kids, it was impossible.  The thing is, even though Christmas eve was very different then the way we have been used to celebrating it, it seemed so much more Christmas-y.  This year, we went out of our way to really focus on the kids having a good time. And they did.

The big focus of the Christmas Eve party, was the coming of Santa Claus to the house.  The kids didn’t know he was coming, but we gave him the invite.  It was all going to begin with the kids sitting around the living room as I read them a Christmas book.  In this case, it was THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.  That went relatively well.  My nephew Paolo was his usual, over curious, excited self, and couldn’t stop moving but all the other kids were surprisingly attentive.  Including my one year old, Ambrose,  who had never had story time before.  He sat and listened quietly. I was very surprised. I got to start reading to that little kid.

Once I was done reading, the kids where asked to sing Jingle Bells.  It was going great until someone turned up the music. At first, everyone thought it was Jingle Bells and we all sang along until we realized it WASN’T Jingle Bells but something else.  It threw everyone off and killed the singing.  Luckily, around that time, there was a knock on the  door and Santa showed up.  He had his sack full of presents and all the kids got really excited.  My daughter Elizabeth was jumping up and down with excitement.  It was fun.   They all got called up one by one to get a present and sit on Santa’s lap.

Lots of pictures and a little bit of crying. Especially from Ambrose, who was pretty sleepy by that point.  That was a lot of fun. I’m glad that we did it.  I think the worst part of the night, for me, was around the time Santa was going to leave.  My three year old, Dante, heard my uncle say Santa had to go because his reindeer where waiting.  Well, Dante REALLY wanted to go out see them.  I ended up telling him that Santa didn’t really bring the deer. I told him he came by car today.  He didn’t believe me, so I had to take him outside to show him there where no reindeer.  He was disappointed.  That really stunk.  It made him sad. Which makes me want to rant about the whole Santa Claus thing, but I’ll save that til  the end of this post.

We left the party around 11pm.  We had eaten late and the kids had been starving.  We should have thought to feed them before we left.  Even so, around 8pm or so, Ambrose was an emotional mess.  He was so tired, he just wanted me to carry him everywhere, which was a pain since he’s getting heavy.  I also wanted to do thing, like eat, and it made it difficult when he just wanted to be on top of me being fussy.  So we left early and by the time we where getting ready for bed, it was Christmas.

On Christmas morning, the kids got up and opened presents.  There weren’t very many of them. In fact, most of them came from the dollar store.  Only one didn’t, CARS SORRY SLIDERS. The kids really liked SORRY SLIDERS and I thought they’d get a kick out of having the Cars one because they call the SORRY SLIDERS the “racer game” anyway. Might as well give them a real “racer game”. Elizabeth was disapionted in her presents (for good reason) mostly because she didn’t get a doll. that kinda annoyed me because she has a ton of them and they just sit there because she doesn’t play with them.  Why those she want another one to ignore?

We ate breakfast and tried to get ready as soon as we could. We had a few stops to make that day.  We had planned to go to 9am Mass but we weren’t quite ready on time for it.  I went alone and Alesha went to the 11am Mass.  Around 1pm we were off to Alesha’s sister’s house. According to Alesha, we were there mostly to eat her sister’s gumbo.  It was REALLY GOOD.  It even had crab legs. The kids played a bit and then watched me play PLANT VS. ZOMBIES, or as they call it, “The bzombie game” (don’t know why they pronounce it with a “b”.

After that, it was off to Alesha’s grandmother’s house.  We got there and visited for a while.  The kids where all over me because they get bored there.  On top of the fact that they were hungry. It was getting close to dinner time.  After what seemed like a very long time, we left.  We actually had one more stop to make.  We had actually stopped off at Alesha’s sister’s house to pick up a document that she needed to take to an aunt’s house.  We were going to go there only Alesha forgot to get the document.  We canceled that stop and headed over to my parent’s house.  We where going to celebrate Christmas there and open the rest of the kid’s presents.  We ate there, opened presents and generally had a good time there.  Alesha was so tired, I think she slept through most of it.  She had done all the driving that day.

We left around 10pm. The kid’s where pretty tired.  They had gotten some really great presents.  Elizabeth got her doll so she was satisfied.

It was a busy, but fun, kid-centric Christmas and somehow, it was that much better for it.

SANTA CLAUS RANT

I’ve never really been a fan of the whole Santa Claus thing.  I’ve been trying to avoid telling my kids that their presents are from Santa, but the culture makes it difficult to do that.  I used to tell them Baby Jesus gave them the presents, which to me, is actually true.  I suppose, it’s not a lie to say that Santa is real, if by Santa, you mean Saint Nicholas.  Since he’s a Saint in heaven before the presence of God and therefore more alive than WE are.  And I suppose we can say that it’s through his intercession (by which I mean his prayer for us to God) that we we give them presents.  Still…it kinda bugs me, since Santa Claus and Saint Nick are often not thought to be the same person. After all, the popular image of Santa that we have in our heads, was actually made popular by Coca Cola billboards.  Before that, there was no definitive Santa Claus look.  It was easier to say, it’s Saint Nick back then.

Maybe I’m thinking about this too hard. What do you think?

 
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