How do your Christmas decorations rate?

Steve has already put up the Christmas lights on our house.

*This is NOT a picture of our house! (It's Clark Griswald's house in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and it rates a Burl Ives on the Fletcher Festive Christmas Lights Scale...read on for details.)

But it WOULD be our house, if Steve had anything to say about it.

Every year I have to restrain him, and every year I find my power over him in this way growing smaller and smaller. I have always been able to put my foot down and say, "Absolutely NO inflatables! No animatronics! No flashing reindeer or speaking Santas!" He complies, but every year he sneaks off to Lowes and buys something new to add to last year's stash...

This year it was a row of light-up Santas that line the border of the walk way up to our door. (I would have taken a picture, but Isaac broke our camera.) True...they are small, but tacky none-the-less, AND one step closer to that gigantic man-size snow globe the kids have been coveting from the yard of another overzealous decorator.

And every year we can be sure to get a few phone calls from neighbors that go something like this:

Phone rings.

Jenn: Hello?

Neighbor: Hello, this is the Iowa City Power Company calling to tell you that you have exceeded your quota wattage for the year and that we have had to sap the wattage from the rest of the city to compensate.

Jenn: Ha ha.

Anyway...

So here is Steve's Festive Christmas Light Rating system. It has been in place since before we were married, as he and his brothers designed it in their infancy. Every year we drive around town and rate houses based on this particular scale from least festive to most festive:

10. Scrooge

9. The Grinch

8. Burgermeister Meisterburger

7. The Heat Miser

6. The Winter Warlock

5. Hermey the Elf

4. Frosty the Snowman

3. Rudolph

2. Santa

1. Burl Ives

This scale takes into consideration a host of things: effort, economic standing, neatness, creativity, etc., etc. One year he gave a Scrooge to a home in a very wealthy neighborhood that only managed to put a skimpy green string of lights on only one bush. So, apparently it is better to do nothing, than to tease Steve in such a fashion. And clearly, as they were so very wealthy, they could have done more. In more modest neighborhoods, Steve gives bonus points for actually making the effort to put lights in a tree, and one could even rank as high as a Santa for lighting up the mailbox. A Burl Ives ranking not only requires an absurd amount of lighting and tackiness, but must also exhibit a reckless disregard for personal safety in the name of Christmas cheer.

Steve rates our house a Rudolph this year, which I thought was a bit generous of him, as I told him, to which he pointed out certain considerations that must be taken into account, such as the time restraints of his job and the financial limits, having to pay for four children on merely a resident's salary, until in the end I was forced to concede. And so it goes with all of the homes to which we rank. Negotiations and deliberations must be made.

And I would like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to all of our future neighbors for the future Clark Griswald-ish display they no doubt will dread every winter.

And to our current neighbors? You have me to personally thank for reining him in. It could be worse. Much, much worse!

PS...To our dear neighbors and friends (the Goodsons), we award a Santa for such a stunning tree lighting! The risk of bodily harm was evident, and the effect is both symmetrical and beautiful. Well done!)

Six Weeks and Counting...

We are suddenly WAY too excited for Christmas.
(Oh yeah...this picture was taken last year. Not today, just in case you were wondering. We're not THAT excited.)

Mr. T-Rex, All Tucked In For the Night

Night night.

Lincoln Practicing the Piano

He's a chip off the old block.

Steve's 34th Birthday--OR--Jenn No Likey Cooking

Look, I know there are some people out there who subscribe to Martha Stewart's magazine and just LOVE to entertain and create beautiful, mouthwatering dishes...

But I am not one of those people. I'd just as soon toss everyone a bagel and an apple for dinner and call it good. But, one cannot live in civilized society, it seems, and escape the inescapable need to make REAL food on occasion.

For example, (sigh) Steve's birthday. It was yesterday. And I spent three stressful hours creating this:

A work of art, surely. (At least, by Jenn-standards, which is why I took a picture.)

But now it has been desecrated. Certainly not worth the three hours of labor it took.

And then there are the decorations for such a party. Once again, I'm not so gifted in this department. We decided to leave out balloons and streamers, and go for a sort of "Macaroni Grill" look (which, by the way, I dined there once in Vegas two tables away from Andre Agassi and Brooke Shields, back in the day when they were still married. And let me say, they look exactly the same in person. She is SO tall and he is SO bald.)

We covered the table with white paper and let the kids run-a-muck with the crayons while we ate, which was actually the highlight of the meal! (The crayon sketches, that is. Not the actual meal itself.) Seriously, my back is still hurting from trying to lay out the paper and arrange the dishes in a pleasing manner and all I was able to pull off was this:

Not very Martha Stewart-ish. (My arch-enemy, I decided!) But still, the paper was a good idea. The kids had fun, at least.

Here are some not-very-good pics of Steve opening a few presents. Nothing exciting this year.

But he did get this AWESOME (to him, at least) surgical cap to wear while, you know, fixing jaws and such. It looks dorky here, but trust me, it looks HOT when he's wearing his scrubs. Rrraaarrrr, baby!

(PS...Thanks, Heidi, for rescuing my torte. I hope the kids returned the mixer in one piece. (?))

This one's going down for all of posterity to witness!

Yeah, that's right! Jenn actually beat Steve in a game of Scrabble! (No need to mention just how narrowly.) Those of you who really know me, know that I hate playing games because I hate to lose...and I usually lose. Especially to Steve. But here's the proof of this one-time triumph, permanently documented and forever retrievable in that wonderous place called cyberspace.

(My favorte word that I played? Molar. It was both appropriate--in reference to Steve's line of work--and high-scoring, as it fell on a triple word square.)

The truth comes out at last...

I am the toothfairy.

Yesterday Lincoln discovered the truth. (Or I guess I should say, his friend told him the truth and shattered his perfect dream world into a million pieces.)

On a similar note: Steve had a patient a few months ago named Princess Diana Toothfairy. I'm not kidding.

First name: Princess.
Middle name: Diana.
Last name: Toothfairy.

As in, "Ahem, Ms. Toothfairy, can you please open your mouth a little wider...?"

Dibs

This morning I came downstairs and found this note posted on the most coveted chair at the breakfast table.

(It's a good thing she put the "F". We wouldn't want to get her confused with the other "Laura" in our family.)

Amazingly enough, no one disputed it when it was time for this:

I love when kids learn how to write!

Sad

Mostly because I just finished reading this great book:



And it made me wish that I could live back in a time when people had no choice but to work hard--mind bogglingly hard--just to eat. I finished it while watching the results come in for the election and it made me even sadder.

Not because I really like this guy and wanted him to win.

I actually don't like John McCain much at all. If I had to choose one of these guys to hang out with, I'd probably pick this one:

No. What made me sad was the political commentator who said that our country used to cheer when Ronald Reagan told them that bigger government was not the answer. They used to cheer when one such president said,"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." (A democrat, by the way.) This political commentator said that now--today--we are desperate for government to step in and take over and fix all of our problems, no matter what the cost.

Why this bothers me? What this sounds like to me is: Please, Mr. President! Fix my life! I've been too greedy for things, overextended my credit, and now I just can't break the habit. What I want is to be able to continue to live the way I am currently living, accumulating more things I can't afford, spend that even BIGGER tax refund on a new flat-screen TV, but I WILL NOT pay for health care. That's YOUR job! Plus, I would really like it if you would not require me to work for any of those benefits. That would be great, thanks!

I mourned the loss of honest work ethic and accountability as I read the pages of Hannah Coulter. I mourned with the father who had labored all of his life to provide food for his family, and then he watched as his son grew indifferent. I mourned with him when he said, "All I want is to see that kid do one day's work because he WANTS to and not because he has to." I mourned for a lost way of life, a way of life illustrated in this book, describing how the community of neighboring farmers formed a "membership" together. "The work was freely given in exchange for work freely given. There was no bookkeeping, no accounting, no settling up. What you owed was considered paid when you had done what needed doing. Every account was paid in full by the understanding that when we were needed we would go, and when we had need the others, or enough of them, would come."

What I really would like Barrack Obama to do while president (which, by the way, I don't think any of our most recent presidents have done, nor do I think John McCain was gearing up to do either) is to inspire the people of this country to take personal accountability for their lives. To inspire them to change the way they spend. To stop creating new government programs that give people MORE incentive to work LESS, and instead to motivate everyone to do their fair share and to take pride in it. To find happiness in pulling one's weight in society. THAT is what will make this country bounce back and become successful again. THAT would make me happy! And if that is his plan, then CONGRATULATIONS, Mr. President! I wholeheartedly support you!

(Okay, I know no one is really going to read this and care, but it felt good to get this off my chest, so now I can go on with my laundry and my carpooling without feeling so pent up. Ahhh, much better.)

Have a good day, everyone!