[yawn, snore, growl]

The below post was actually like 8 hours earlier, but Blogger was down, typical...

So anyway, traditional Wilson xmas with the kids... My parents were always trying to devise ways to keep us out of the living room where they'd laid out all the presents from Santa and our stockings full of candy and whatnot, and thus hopefully keep us quiet so they could sleep until a sane hour... (6am was the usual wake-up time) All the bedrooms open up into the same hallway in this house, so if they could find a way to block that they would succeed in their task... The most popular year consisted of lots and lots of newspaper, to the point they had covered they entire space between the walls ceiling with it, and placed all the scissors in the house on the other side... The kids woke up around 2am and spent the next hour or so taking a snip every 10 minutes with an old corrugated pair from my sister's sewing set... Around 3 we finally had a big enough space to crawl through and the living room was ours! Another year they tried the bells on strings approach, with all of them connected via some contraption, so that when we cut one we had to catch them all before they hit...One of their final attempts was talking trash about getting a "motion detector" for about 3 months, to the point my dad even took my brother shopping in that section a couple weeks prior at an electronics store... Turned out they had this elaborate setup with flashing lights and what looked much like a motion detector, but was really an intercom. The whole wake-up scene was always pretty elaborate on our part... A few years we'd have very loud music start playing (Lion King's Circle of Life was always good), me blasting on the trumpet, and my brother screaming or yelling or doing something else obnoxious as we kicked in the door to the parents bedroom...

Anyway, as you can see, Christmas is a quite complicated occasion at the Wilson house, starting at about 6am, ending around 10 or 11 depending on the year once all the presents have been opened, candy been stuffed in, and breakfast caserrole been finished off...

Part of my gifts to the family were candy bars to each of them with a rhyme associated to it... For example my brothers:

"I just wanted you to know I'll always think you're pure chunk;
no matter how many girls call you a:"
Then there was a large BIG HUNK candy bar attached to the paper... My father's was pretty good too:

"You did very well skiing, proving false my hunch;
that you'd go flying off the hill into a tree, and I'd hear you go:"
And of course, a large CRUNCH attached to that one.

Harhar. Me so funny. So anyway. Did pretty well on the recieving end, picked up a swiss army knife I finally clued into needing about the 80th time I was looking for scissors or a kitchen knife to open a package or whatnot this break... Also got the usual wolf shirt, (i'm a big wolf fan, their eyes are almost as cool as mine, and their personality is basically the same ;) ) although this one is the prettiest so far, and various t-shirts with clever or funny sayings that I'm infamous for wearing on a regular basis... Also picked up the latest edition of Creative's sound card, which combined with my speaker system makes mp3's, games, and movies sound pretty amazing...

A grand ol time was had by all! Next up is a description of "The Next Day" (tm) when I ended east for the mountains... Will save that one for tonight.