a lot of things about a time i was in victoria at my sister's for christmas...
happy january ninth. christmas is still alive in my home. the lights zigzagging my bedroom window, they're still there. the nativity set with white lights around them, yes. still there. believe balls, angel garland, snowflake, all still there. mostly it's just laziness/busyness on my part but also i'm frankly not ready to let go of the lights in particular. they may dark days and nights glowy and special sauce.
i wanted to document my christmas holidays. i even kept a yule log memo on my phone so i wouldn't forget stuff. but you know, time goes by and things don't seem as pert'nant. but i'm cozy in my bed and i don't work until 1:30 so let's see what happens. that's all i'm saying. no promises. no guarantees.
december 19th has to be mentioned. it's a day that really shaped our christmas festivities in a long lasting and particular way. it was monday morning and we decided to get our snow flakes on. at first it was just me and sloan and adriel but later sarah joined. it was fun and many a good flake was created. we decided to name the flakes a tradition that started during the first snow flake christmas when bethany and i flaked the house on neyland drive in nanaimo. the naming started out tamely at first when it was just me and the boys. but when sarah was added to the mix and the boys took off to play, genious and wild things started to happen. in fact we derived so much joy from our snow flake names that the names then took on a life of their own. i named one of mine twirly farquad. i was obsessed with farquad. i couldn't stop saying it. and then 'kris kringle left me' happened, which really hit our funny bones. we thought it should be a country song. other flakes like 'look at me now kris/eat your heart out kris kringle' 'kris kringle's frank and beans' and 'kris kringle is my baby daddy', were born out of it and then somehow farquad was the baby.... the entertainment for us was never ending. other snowflakes of note were metaphysical marriage bed, eat your eggs son/ie. bethany is egg, storm trooper/i et jonas selkirk/ oishii desu ne, threadifer, tartineean/tarty two shoes/tart me up 8 days a week/ tart ton oh fun....reigndeer bliss/i dangle where i wangle... as sarah was hanging them i would be taping thread to them and sometimes adding new names as our ideas flowed. after they were all hung they boys came back and i gave them shoulder rides so they could read the name of the flakes.
later that day sloan and adriel had hair cuts. the plan was for me to take their pics so sarah could use them for presents for the grandparentals. so sloan was done first and he and i went up to the arbeauty forest behind their neighbourhood and did some shots. to get to the forest, you have to go up a trail to the top of the bluff, navigating icy patches and mudy patches and stopping to admire a frozen 'waterfall' along the way. it was just before dusk and the forest was dark behind us. i had him stand by a little pine-ling. handsome right?
when we got back sarah was still doing adriel's hair and it took too long and it was too dark when she was done because well these are the shortest days of the year dudes.
we finally did adriel's on the 23rd though
i had to take sarah along because he's at that stage where smiling on command is weiwd. so she did her thing to make him smile naturally. i think this picture might have been taken while we were talking about one of his crushes...
speaking of which...sarah tells the story of the previous week when adriel, who had been sick with a bad cough, was coming down the stairs the day of his school swimming field trip, in his swimming trunks. he didn't know she was watching him and he said to himself "lookin' good for the ladies!" all rico suave, then when sarah laughed and said something he was like "well yeah i have this awesome eight pack!" (he said it only shows when he coughs). the lolz we've had from this are also extensive and let's just say both sarah and i put that on his gift tags. to adriel, lookin good for the ladies! love aunty laura.
so anyways the boys expect treats after they get their hair cut. sarah feels wronged about this, but it's a tradition she started so she's slave to it. after dinner we went to the seven eleven and the boys got slurpees and we got a slurpee for kyle of the exploding tongue cankers. back at home we had a family home evening. sarah and sloan told the nativity story with mom's felt board nativity set. it was very cute. meanwhile huxley was downing gulps of everyone's slurpees. after the lesson we played upset the fruit basket. at first kyle was a stick in the mud about this so naturally his name was sour grapes. adriel was fat banana because fat is his favourite adjective right now, sloan was rotten pear and sarah was sugar plum. i was tiny kumquat, naturally. "you're always kumquat!" says sarah. shrug says i. when i was finally in the middle, which was a while into the game, because i don't want to brag, but i rock at upset the fruit basket, i started this middle persona where you kind of lean to and from from leg to leg swining your arms like an ape and again, not to brag, but i'd like to say that kyle got out of his sour grapiness by using my stance. sarah did it too, because it's fun! it was a loud raucous, boy crushing, tackling kind of game as it should be. we followed it with the animal game. animal action and sound. this was also fun and no one wanted it to be over, but eventually it was time for the boys to go to bed. i think kyle was hearding them upstairs and i was sitting on the couch talking to sarah who was standing and sugar intoxicated huxley was jumping all around and chasing the dog and we weren't really paying attention until in the middle of our talking we noticed him from our peripheral visions, on all fours crawling at a frantic pace and panting. true inheritor of the cabin fever gene it seems.
december 20th. #soupandabun. all i know is we went to costco and sloan and i did special speed missions to find laceys and exchange a bum butter. not to be confused with bum-butter, because while one is a butter that's bum, the other is, well...poo. we picked up the belovedbyall sil and brought him home. when we arrived adriel and his other friend trevor or taylor, where already there with nerf guns in guilty hands, and suspiciously some flakes were down and others were suffering. i did more wrapping and sloan and taylor helped me. i don't have much else written for this day. was this the night we were wrapping and a very large and slow wasp or two emerged from my ribbon box? kyle was coerced into dealing with them. since my bow box was out on my porch, these wasps were probably refugees from the great and terrible blanket wasps nest of 2016.
december 21st . we were so sluggish this morning. slugs a'bed. slugs a snappin. i asked sarah to give me flat iron curls to freshen up my frizzes. "flat irons are so 2000" said sarah and used a curling iron instead. then i put on my golden glittery reindeer ears and drove downtown to meet amy aka speshul. somehow in the craziness that is down town streets in victoria, i managed to find parking and amy was just arriving at the same time. i met her in front of lush. it felt so warm to me that day because the cold snap had finally broken and it was sunny and i was all "bare arms are appropriate!" amy was all brrbrr. so we went into lush and picked out a bath bomb for sarah to give to kyle. for some reason the bath bomb shaped like santa's face and titled "father christmas" seemed like it was THE one for kyle. then we did some fun shops to some fun stores. i got a few more things--a game for kyle, an adult colouring daily calender for sloan, trick poop and grow your own yeti for adriel... then we came to that store sarah likes. i think it's called flavour. we went in and we had a lookiloo. yeah, there were some cute things on the bottom floor, but when we went up to the sales floor, we found lots of things and i basically stuffed amy in a changeroom and made her try on all of the options. ok, i know amy and sarah are not the same, but somehow when we saw how it fit on amy we could imagine the different ways it would look on sarah. this year i've kept the energy types in my mind as i've been buying for people. i try to buy them things according to their types. it's kinda fun to do dood. well the clear winners were these fashion joggers that were kind of peach silky on the inside and black lace on the outside. as soon as amy came out in those, we knew they were the winners. amy is a 4 and that's why she looks so cute and perfect with straight bangs across her forehead. just saying.
yeah, so amy was limping like an old woman and so i asked her "what's your deal?" "oh i made a really dumb decision, " hesitates amy. i've made lots of those, but i didn't say that because no one should ever know. shhhhh. anyways, amy then tells me this story of how oh yeah one day her and her wackamole friends climbed the johnston street bridge and yeah, so amy climbed down the part where the ladder ends early and there's this smooth part and well, she just let go because it didn't look that far. "wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut." i said with my eyes popping out of my head and onto the sidewalk where i stepped on them both, "how far was it?" "6-8 feet" says amy showing me a pic of her hand after the incident. it was a puffy paw. so now she has a bum wrist and a bum hip.
amy and i parted ways because she was doing winter solstice things with jorge. i drove to uptown and bought a memory card and fabric felts and then drove back to langford. it was dinner time. kyle brought us home yummy vietnamse food. but first the sisters had to come with a message. i was tired so i had a rest in my room like an antisocial. sloan came to get me when they were gone and we scarffed down our tasties. i don't know if it was because i didn't eat lunch that day, but it tasted like the best thing i ever had. kyle's festering tongue didn't allow him to finish his and then shmuxly spilled it on the ground and that's when kyle's world came crashing down.
if your vietnamese food, that you couldn't eat because of your exploding pus tongue gets spilled on the floor by your baby and then eaten by your dog, life is not worth living. unless...unless you have a popsicle, obviously. so sarah and i went to seven 11 and got kyle some popsicles. and some for ourselves because we want a life worth living too.
that night sarah and i wrapped presents. she had a couple of presents that we named. we had the naming disease. the first one that she was not pleased with i named 'fart'. fart was followed by 'slackjaw' and 'farquad to the 3rd degree'. some time during this night sarah murmurred "farquad ate my baby" which sent us into peals of laughter and speculation on what turned farquad to canabalisim--maybe the abandonment of kris kringle....
december 22nd-- mostly what i did this day was make slime with sloan. sarah had to go practice a song with some ladies. sloan and i did some youtube research. we tried on recipe and it didn't work and then we found another one and voila! slime was born. sarah was less enthusiastic about the slime, but we loved it. perhaps sarah didn't like how sloan left the slime dripping off her decorative reigndeer's antler. perhaps she didn't appreciate bits of slime found in the carpet throughout the house, who knows why she felt so prejudiced about it. just know that sloan and i and sometimes adriel liked it very much. once the slime fun was over we decided to make paper fortune tellers. you know the oragami ones where you fold them all up? the ones we played with as kids? adriel decided to do it with us too. sarah came home some time during this, and amy arrived too. i'm hazy about the details, because well, i was making a fortune teller and as sarah said later "laura cannot be moved when making a fortune teller". our fortune tellers were christmas themed so instead of spelling out colours as you move your fortune teller you spell out things like tree, light or reigndeer. sarah wanted me and amy to make tuna melts, but i could not be moved from my fortune telling and left amy to do it alone after first inadvertently scorning her progress by saying "that's all you have? tuna and mayo?" crafting fortune tellers can turn one ugly if one does not watch ones self.
me and amy went with sarah to look at a prospective townhouse. the realtor was named joan and she had flashy tights and shortly cropped silver hair do with heavy rimmed glasses. there's no point to knowing that, but now you know. in the end she didn't get picked because of the dog.
later amy drew ninjahs in the armpits of some tops i got for adriel and sloan. we have an armpit ninjah history. then i felt sleepy and had a snooze. when i woke up there was a coconut curry but no amy. after dinner sarah and i had to get something from michaels and we stopped at the market to buy amy special chocolate bars and some mayo for her stocking. then we went to starbucks for a treat and we made our christmas dinner grocery list. kyle, who didn't eat the curry texted sarah to say "don't judge me but can you get me chicken nuggets from mcdonald's". after that we once again found ourselves at seven 11 once again buying popsicles. the clerk was super awkward and when he thought we weren't looking he was doing awkward moves. we watched 4 christmases on netflix...or i did, they snoozed.
december 23rd-- kyle stayed home from work. sarah, adriel and i trudged up to the forest and i took adriel's photo and then sent the pics to london drugs to be developed. we were meeting amy at tilicum but she got there way before us. so we tortured her because first we had to stop at the london drugs and ask them to make one more large photo and add it on. and then when we were stopping at tilicum kyle was grumpy because--tongue. they wanted to check out this house in sydney and sarah said if shmuxley was asleep, and he was, i was tickling him in his sleep, we should let him sleep longer and go to sydney and kyle was like, it's going to take only 10 minutes to get to sydney. and we were like--this is like the time at lake louise, and he said no it wasn't and we were like let's have a bet. meanwhile we picked up amy and drove to sydney--37minutes. classic kyle. they looked around the outside of the house and amy and i sat in the car. then we drove back and went to montana's for lunch. suddenly i was super cold, which we all know is not like me. basically this is when my fever started. so we had some yummies and we played MASHOD while we waited. kyle married sarah, was a gyno, lived in paris in a shack with one kid and drove an astin martin. sarah married ryan gosling, lived in an outhouse and was a romance novelist with 9 kids and a chauffeured limo.
we bought our christmas foods at save-on-foods and drugs. i was feeling very hot and kind of weird and dizzy but i did not clue in that i had a fever as of yet. when the foods were going through at the cashier i asked kyle to guess the price. he guessed 87.00, pffffft "novice", i thought and guessed 120. sarah guessed 138 and it was 138.70 so i guess we know who the pro is. later that night i was wrapping presents with sarah and that's when she suggested i might have a fever and gave me some tylenol.
december 24th--i felt somewhat better. but i looked like this:
kyle and the boys had this great idea to open their jammies present early so they could 'wear them all day'. sarah had her doubts but gave in, saying she was waiting until that night which made kyle reluctantly wait as well. so the boys opened theirs. adriel, who had been pooh emoji crazy got a pooh emoji onesie. sarah was so excited for him to open it. but his reaction was not what she had hoped for. basically he needed to know it was cool. so i went to work on the sly mentioning what i thought was cool about it and later, to my surprise, i heard him telling his mom what he liked about it, listing the very things i had mentioned. beams with pride. anyways kyle was making caramel pretzels dipped in chocolate and sometimes i helped him and sometimes sarah did.
sloan was embarrassed about the butt flap and had to be coerced into standing this way with butt flap on display.
ann arrived with a hulaballoo. i moved to the boy's room and the boys and ann all moved into my room. it turned out that sloan really wanted a mood necklace and he also really felt he was getting one, i discovered. thus began the great mood necklace search of christmas eve 2016. we met a lot of nice people who tried to help us, but none of them could. so we ate at the all you can eat indian buffet where sarah and kyle once again were infatuated with the idea that our young server liked me. maybe as his mom. we had to wait for some naan, but other than that, it was yummy.
that night was perogy night as usual. but we were late getting it all on the table and thus late going out caroling but we had lots of fun none-the-less.
our second to last stop was at syl's house and his mom, being the very hospitable middle easterner that she is had us in, and we looked all over her house and she gave us treats and drinks and then eventually we left.
back at home we called up mom and dad and did the candle ceremony with them on speaker phone. first mom sang her special song. then we passed the candle around. dad was quite funny because he seemed to feel the need to provide a commentary on everyone's candle testimony. it was nice and special and before the night was through we opened jammy presents, which was a surprise to me and amy because we didn't expect to get jammy presents, but sarah had some for us too. mine were white long john types with gold stars and a teal top with a golden star on it. we changed into our jammies and proceeded to wrap our last presents. we were tired. and we looked like this:
i actually didn't have much to wrap. i helped sarah do her last few and then we all went to bed.
december 25th-- i woke up briefly at 5:30 and texted bethany a revenge early morning text but i don't think she got it until later. the boys then woke us up at 7am. i opened amy's stocking to me. she got me these rad huge circle rose tinted sunnies that we saw when we were shopping together, and that i loved. she gave me lots of yummies, like a yummy tea, and a yummy body scrub, for example. down at the tree, the boys were excited. huxley was so cute and cuddly. he got a monkey that wrapped it's arms around you and he sat cuddling on kyle's lap with the monkey around his neck looking soooo cute and sooo sweet. everyone opened all their presents. everyone got lovely things and gave lovely things as always. after the tree we had a breakfast casserole and then we got ready for church. i wore my black dress with my new turquoise jellyfish knee highs from adriel and my new copper foil eye shadow from sloan and my new sparkly necklace pendant from sarah and my sunnies too because it was a sunny day. amy left just before we all left for church.
after church sarah and i took some pics in the parking lot.
sloan in with his new bow tie. i think he looks kind of like a leprechaun
this guy wanted a new profile pic. this is the family that sarah and kyle are staying with.
my face looks weiwd, you don't have to tell me.
christmas day jumps:
when we got home i had a nap and woke up with a fever and a sore throat, cough, runny nose and sneezing. so i trimmed the brussel sprouts. and huxley who is a table monster, threw sloan's wooden magnetic bow tie which i got him on the floor and arlo chewed it. sloan already had some drama with the bow tie, thought the magnet fell in the vent at church and had sarah face first on the carpet between the pews looking for it with her head down the vent. then it fell off when he got out of the car... and then this. but kyle saved the day by reshaping the bow to eliminate most of the chewed part. oh i forgot to say that kyle's brother adam came over before church and gave the boys even more nerf guns and came to church with us. while i was trimming the sprouts kyle and ann and adam were watching old home movies of the boys when they were little. dinner was delicious and i don't remember much more than that.
december 26th-- what needs to be said is that kyle, sloan and i were very sick with coughs and rattle and wheezes in our chests. but this did not stop us from going shopping as is sarah and kyle's boxing day custom. at h&m i convinced sarah to use the elevator as a change room. a genious suggestion by me, as there were long change room waits. the elevator had mirrors on the two facing walls and railings to hang her clothes on. she wasn't taking off any clothes, you understand, just putting them on. and i could sit down on the floor and rest my weary body while commenting on her outfits. a couple of interruptions by people changing floors and sarah inconceivably lost her moxy.
later we accidentally met up with amy and jorge and we all went to a game store. kyle bought some games and i bought an exploding kittens game that turned out to be shockingly crude and bizarre. but i also bought a bag of candies that was fresh and soft and delicious
december 27th--we looked at a townhouse--didn't get it. ann went home because she didn't want to get sick. we went for a walk to the mailbox just to get out of the house. on the way home we found a trail and explored it. there was a beautiful old arbutus tree and sloan tried to climb it.
we made baked brie, wrapped in a puff pastry, and we made ice cream sandwiches with the lacey cookies that we almost forgot about and we played games.
december 28th--sloan's birthday. we had brunch at floyd's
after sarah and i took adriel and sloan to swim at the ymca pool. there was a little kerfuffle before we left because adriel wanted to wear the locker bracelet but it was sloan's birthday so...when sloan called him a bonk-head he started to cry, which really hit my funny bone. bonk-head. lolz. we had lots of fun at the pool and played gamez and had lolz. i wore kyle's walkadongs (his flip flops that i had taken over as my shuffle out of the house foot wear) and sarah said "and the walkadongs shall be heard" and it was. that night we went to the late movie to see star wars. we wanted bahn mi but there was no more bahn mi, so we got wendy's. then i speedwalked past sarah and kyle while they were at the concession because they deserved it.
december 29th--i came home and christmas was over.
i wanted to document my christmas holidays. i even kept a yule log memo on my phone so i wouldn't forget stuff. but you know, time goes by and things don't seem as pert'nant. but i'm cozy in my bed and i don't work until 1:30 so let's see what happens. that's all i'm saying. no promises. no guarantees.
december 19th has to be mentioned. it's a day that really shaped our christmas festivities in a long lasting and particular way. it was monday morning and we decided to get our snow flakes on. at first it was just me and sloan and adriel but later sarah joined. it was fun and many a good flake was created. we decided to name the flakes a tradition that started during the first snow flake christmas when bethany and i flaked the house on neyland drive in nanaimo. the naming started out tamely at first when it was just me and the boys. but when sarah was added to the mix and the boys took off to play, genious and wild things started to happen. in fact we derived so much joy from our snow flake names that the names then took on a life of their own. i named one of mine twirly farquad. i was obsessed with farquad. i couldn't stop saying it. and then 'kris kringle left me' happened, which really hit our funny bones. we thought it should be a country song. other flakes like 'look at me now kris/eat your heart out kris kringle' 'kris kringle's frank and beans' and 'kris kringle is my baby daddy', were born out of it and then somehow farquad was the baby.... the entertainment for us was never ending. other snowflakes of note were metaphysical marriage bed, eat your eggs son/ie. bethany is egg, storm trooper/i et jonas selkirk/ oishii desu ne, threadifer, tartineean/tarty two shoes/tart me up 8 days a week/ tart ton oh fun....reigndeer bliss/i dangle where i wangle... as sarah was hanging them i would be taping thread to them and sometimes adding new names as our ideas flowed. after they were all hung they boys came back and i gave them shoulder rides so they could read the name of the flakes.
later that day sloan and adriel had hair cuts. the plan was for me to take their pics so sarah could use them for presents for the grandparentals. so sloan was done first and he and i went up to the arbeauty forest behind their neighbourhood and did some shots. to get to the forest, you have to go up a trail to the top of the bluff, navigating icy patches and mudy patches and stopping to admire a frozen 'waterfall' along the way. it was just before dusk and the forest was dark behind us. i had him stand by a little pine-ling. handsome right?
we finally did adriel's on the 23rd though
speaking of which...sarah tells the story of the previous week when adriel, who had been sick with a bad cough, was coming down the stairs the day of his school swimming field trip, in his swimming trunks. he didn't know she was watching him and he said to himself "lookin' good for the ladies!" all rico suave, then when sarah laughed and said something he was like "well yeah i have this awesome eight pack!" (he said it only shows when he coughs). the lolz we've had from this are also extensive and let's just say both sarah and i put that on his gift tags. to adriel, lookin good for the ladies! love aunty laura.
so anyways the boys expect treats after they get their hair cut. sarah feels wronged about this, but it's a tradition she started so she's slave to it. after dinner we went to the seven eleven and the boys got slurpees and we got a slurpee for kyle of the exploding tongue cankers. back at home we had a family home evening. sarah and sloan told the nativity story with mom's felt board nativity set. it was very cute. meanwhile huxley was downing gulps of everyone's slurpees. after the lesson we played upset the fruit basket. at first kyle was a stick in the mud about this so naturally his name was sour grapes. adriel was fat banana because fat is his favourite adjective right now, sloan was rotten pear and sarah was sugar plum. i was tiny kumquat, naturally. "you're always kumquat!" says sarah. shrug says i. when i was finally in the middle, which was a while into the game, because i don't want to brag, but i rock at upset the fruit basket, i started this middle persona where you kind of lean to and from from leg to leg swining your arms like an ape and again, not to brag, but i'd like to say that kyle got out of his sour grapiness by using my stance. sarah did it too, because it's fun! it was a loud raucous, boy crushing, tackling kind of game as it should be. we followed it with the animal game. animal action and sound. this was also fun and no one wanted it to be over, but eventually it was time for the boys to go to bed. i think kyle was hearding them upstairs and i was sitting on the couch talking to sarah who was standing and sugar intoxicated huxley was jumping all around and chasing the dog and we weren't really paying attention until in the middle of our talking we noticed him from our peripheral visions, on all fours crawling at a frantic pace and panting. true inheritor of the cabin fever gene it seems.
december 20th. #soupandabun. all i know is we went to costco and sloan and i did special speed missions to find laceys and exchange a bum butter. not to be confused with bum-butter, because while one is a butter that's bum, the other is, well...poo. we picked up the belovedbyall sil and brought him home. when we arrived adriel and his other friend trevor or taylor, where already there with nerf guns in guilty hands, and suspiciously some flakes were down and others were suffering. i did more wrapping and sloan and taylor helped me. i don't have much else written for this day. was this the night we were wrapping and a very large and slow wasp or two emerged from my ribbon box? kyle was coerced into dealing with them. since my bow box was out on my porch, these wasps were probably refugees from the great and terrible blanket wasps nest of 2016.
december 21st . we were so sluggish this morning. slugs a'bed. slugs a snappin. i asked sarah to give me flat iron curls to freshen up my frizzes. "flat irons are so 2000" said sarah and used a curling iron instead. then i put on my golden glittery reindeer ears and drove downtown to meet amy aka speshul. somehow in the craziness that is down town streets in victoria, i managed to find parking and amy was just arriving at the same time. i met her in front of lush. it felt so warm to me that day because the cold snap had finally broken and it was sunny and i was all "bare arms are appropriate!" amy was all brrbrr. so we went into lush and picked out a bath bomb for sarah to give to kyle. for some reason the bath bomb shaped like santa's face and titled "father christmas" seemed like it was THE one for kyle. then we did some fun shops to some fun stores. i got a few more things--a game for kyle, an adult colouring daily calender for sloan, trick poop and grow your own yeti for adriel... then we came to that store sarah likes. i think it's called flavour. we went in and we had a lookiloo. yeah, there were some cute things on the bottom floor, but when we went up to the sales floor, we found lots of things and i basically stuffed amy in a changeroom and made her try on all of the options. ok, i know amy and sarah are not the same, but somehow when we saw how it fit on amy we could imagine the different ways it would look on sarah. this year i've kept the energy types in my mind as i've been buying for people. i try to buy them things according to their types. it's kinda fun to do dood. well the clear winners were these fashion joggers that were kind of peach silky on the inside and black lace on the outside. as soon as amy came out in those, we knew they were the winners. amy is a 4 and that's why she looks so cute and perfect with straight bangs across her forehead. just saying.
yeah, so amy was limping like an old woman and so i asked her "what's your deal?" "oh i made a really dumb decision, " hesitates amy. i've made lots of those, but i didn't say that because no one should ever know. shhhhh. anyways, amy then tells me this story of how oh yeah one day her and her wackamole friends climbed the johnston street bridge and yeah, so amy climbed down the part where the ladder ends early and there's this smooth part and well, she just let go because it didn't look that far. "wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut." i said with my eyes popping out of my head and onto the sidewalk where i stepped on them both, "how far was it?" "6-8 feet" says amy showing me a pic of her hand after the incident. it was a puffy paw. so now she has a bum wrist and a bum hip.
amy and i parted ways because she was doing winter solstice things with jorge. i drove to uptown and bought a memory card and fabric felts and then drove back to langford. it was dinner time. kyle brought us home yummy vietnamse food. but first the sisters had to come with a message. i was tired so i had a rest in my room like an antisocial. sloan came to get me when they were gone and we scarffed down our tasties. i don't know if it was because i didn't eat lunch that day, but it tasted like the best thing i ever had. kyle's festering tongue didn't allow him to finish his and then shmuxly spilled it on the ground and that's when kyle's world came crashing down.
if your vietnamese food, that you couldn't eat because of your exploding pus tongue gets spilled on the floor by your baby and then eaten by your dog, life is not worth living. unless...unless you have a popsicle, obviously. so sarah and i went to seven 11 and got kyle some popsicles. and some for ourselves because we want a life worth living too.
that night sarah and i wrapped presents. she had a couple of presents that we named. we had the naming disease. the first one that she was not pleased with i named 'fart'. fart was followed by 'slackjaw' and 'farquad to the 3rd degree'. some time during this night sarah murmurred "farquad ate my baby" which sent us into peals of laughter and speculation on what turned farquad to canabalisim--maybe the abandonment of kris kringle....
december 22nd-- mostly what i did this day was make slime with sloan. sarah had to go practice a song with some ladies. sloan and i did some youtube research. we tried on recipe and it didn't work and then we found another one and voila! slime was born. sarah was less enthusiastic about the slime, but we loved it. perhaps sarah didn't like how sloan left the slime dripping off her decorative reigndeer's antler. perhaps she didn't appreciate bits of slime found in the carpet throughout the house, who knows why she felt so prejudiced about it. just know that sloan and i and sometimes adriel liked it very much. once the slime fun was over we decided to make paper fortune tellers. you know the oragami ones where you fold them all up? the ones we played with as kids? adriel decided to do it with us too. sarah came home some time during this, and amy arrived too. i'm hazy about the details, because well, i was making a fortune teller and as sarah said later "laura cannot be moved when making a fortune teller". our fortune tellers were christmas themed so instead of spelling out colours as you move your fortune teller you spell out things like tree, light or reigndeer. sarah wanted me and amy to make tuna melts, but i could not be moved from my fortune telling and left amy to do it alone after first inadvertently scorning her progress by saying "that's all you have? tuna and mayo?" crafting fortune tellers can turn one ugly if one does not watch ones self.
me and amy went with sarah to look at a prospective townhouse. the realtor was named joan and she had flashy tights and shortly cropped silver hair do with heavy rimmed glasses. there's no point to knowing that, but now you know. in the end she didn't get picked because of the dog.
later amy drew ninjahs in the armpits of some tops i got for adriel and sloan. we have an armpit ninjah history. then i felt sleepy and had a snooze. when i woke up there was a coconut curry but no amy. after dinner sarah and i had to get something from michaels and we stopped at the market to buy amy special chocolate bars and some mayo for her stocking. then we went to starbucks for a treat and we made our christmas dinner grocery list. kyle, who didn't eat the curry texted sarah to say "don't judge me but can you get me chicken nuggets from mcdonald's". after that we once again found ourselves at seven 11 once again buying popsicles. the clerk was super awkward and when he thought we weren't looking he was doing awkward moves. we watched 4 christmases on netflix...or i did, they snoozed.
december 23rd-- kyle stayed home from work. sarah, adriel and i trudged up to the forest and i took adriel's photo and then sent the pics to london drugs to be developed. we were meeting amy at tilicum but she got there way before us. so we tortured her because first we had to stop at the london drugs and ask them to make one more large photo and add it on. and then when we were stopping at tilicum kyle was grumpy because--tongue. they wanted to check out this house in sydney and sarah said if shmuxley was asleep, and he was, i was tickling him in his sleep, we should let him sleep longer and go to sydney and kyle was like, it's going to take only 10 minutes to get to sydney. and we were like--this is like the time at lake louise, and he said no it wasn't and we were like let's have a bet. meanwhile we picked up amy and drove to sydney--37minutes. classic kyle. they looked around the outside of the house and amy and i sat in the car. then we drove back and went to montana's for lunch. suddenly i was super cold, which we all know is not like me. basically this is when my fever started. so we had some yummies and we played MASHOD while we waited. kyle married sarah, was a gyno, lived in paris in a shack with one kid and drove an astin martin. sarah married ryan gosling, lived in an outhouse and was a romance novelist with 9 kids and a chauffeured limo.
we bought our christmas foods at save-on-foods and drugs. i was feeling very hot and kind of weird and dizzy but i did not clue in that i had a fever as of yet. when the foods were going through at the cashier i asked kyle to guess the price. he guessed 87.00, pffffft "novice", i thought and guessed 120. sarah guessed 138 and it was 138.70 so i guess we know who the pro is. later that night i was wrapping presents with sarah and that's when she suggested i might have a fever and gave me some tylenol.
december 24th--i felt somewhat better. but i looked like this:
kyle and the boys had this great idea to open their jammies present early so they could 'wear them all day'. sarah had her doubts but gave in, saying she was waiting until that night which made kyle reluctantly wait as well. so the boys opened theirs. adriel, who had been pooh emoji crazy got a pooh emoji onesie. sarah was so excited for him to open it. but his reaction was not what she had hoped for. basically he needed to know it was cool. so i went to work on the sly mentioning what i thought was cool about it and later, to my surprise, i heard him telling his mom what he liked about it, listing the very things i had mentioned. beams with pride. anyways kyle was making caramel pretzels dipped in chocolate and sometimes i helped him and sometimes sarah did.
that night was perogy night as usual. but we were late getting it all on the table and thus late going out caroling but we had lots of fun none-the-less.
back at home we called up mom and dad and did the candle ceremony with them on speaker phone. first mom sang her special song. then we passed the candle around. dad was quite funny because he seemed to feel the need to provide a commentary on everyone's candle testimony. it was nice and special and before the night was through we opened jammy presents, which was a surprise to me and amy because we didn't expect to get jammy presents, but sarah had some for us too. mine were white long john types with gold stars and a teal top with a golden star on it. we changed into our jammies and proceeded to wrap our last presents. we were tired. and we looked like this:
december 25th-- i woke up briefly at 5:30 and texted bethany a revenge early morning text but i don't think she got it until later. the boys then woke us up at 7am. i opened amy's stocking to me. she got me these rad huge circle rose tinted sunnies that we saw when we were shopping together, and that i loved. she gave me lots of yummies, like a yummy tea, and a yummy body scrub, for example. down at the tree, the boys were excited. huxley was so cute and cuddly. he got a monkey that wrapped it's arms around you and he sat cuddling on kyle's lap with the monkey around his neck looking soooo cute and sooo sweet. everyone opened all their presents. everyone got lovely things and gave lovely things as always. after the tree we had a breakfast casserole and then we got ready for church. i wore my black dress with my new turquoise jellyfish knee highs from adriel and my new copper foil eye shadow from sloan and my new sparkly necklace pendant from sarah and my sunnies too because it was a sunny day. amy left just before we all left for church.
after church sarah and i took some pics in the parking lot.
when we got home i had a nap and woke up with a fever and a sore throat, cough, runny nose and sneezing. so i trimmed the brussel sprouts. and huxley who is a table monster, threw sloan's wooden magnetic bow tie which i got him on the floor and arlo chewed it. sloan already had some drama with the bow tie, thought the magnet fell in the vent at church and had sarah face first on the carpet between the pews looking for it with her head down the vent. then it fell off when he got out of the car... and then this. but kyle saved the day by reshaping the bow to eliminate most of the chewed part. oh i forgot to say that kyle's brother adam came over before church and gave the boys even more nerf guns and came to church with us. while i was trimming the sprouts kyle and ann and adam were watching old home movies of the boys when they were little. dinner was delicious and i don't remember much more than that.
december 26th-- what needs to be said is that kyle, sloan and i were very sick with coughs and rattle and wheezes in our chests. but this did not stop us from going shopping as is sarah and kyle's boxing day custom. at h&m i convinced sarah to use the elevator as a change room. a genious suggestion by me, as there were long change room waits. the elevator had mirrors on the two facing walls and railings to hang her clothes on. she wasn't taking off any clothes, you understand, just putting them on. and i could sit down on the floor and rest my weary body while commenting on her outfits. a couple of interruptions by people changing floors and sarah inconceivably lost her moxy.
later we accidentally met up with amy and jorge and we all went to a game store. kyle bought some games and i bought an exploding kittens game that turned out to be shockingly crude and bizarre. but i also bought a bag of candies that was fresh and soft and delicious
december 27th--we looked at a townhouse--didn't get it. ann went home because she didn't want to get sick. we went for a walk to the mailbox just to get out of the house. on the way home we found a trail and explored it. there was a beautiful old arbutus tree and sloan tried to climb it.
we made baked brie, wrapped in a puff pastry, and we made ice cream sandwiches with the lacey cookies that we almost forgot about and we played games.
december 28th--sloan's birthday. we had brunch at floyd's
december 29th--i came home and christmas was over.
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