Merry Christmas Eve

I most certainly won't have time to post again until Friday, so Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Christmas seems to come in stages for me. The initial planning stage. The execution stage. The prepatory wrap up stage. The mom and dad are here stage. The insanity stage. The mom and dad have left stage. The exhaustion stage.

Last night, we entered the mom and dad are here stage. Many hours earlier than I anticipated. About 9:30pm I got a call from mom saying they were in Hannibal Missouri. They'd gotten too excited packing up the truck and decided to drive half way last night. They were going to stop in Iowa City and would see my at about 1pm today. Well, alright, I mean, they're already on the road, I can't say no. It just meant that I'd have to do some cleaning and cooking under their watchful eyes.

Except at 4:30am, I got a call saying "Dad wouldn't stop" (a likely story) and could they use their key to let themselves in. "Go back to sleep". Uh huh. Well, instead of the 4 hour warning that key is supposed to require, I got a 12 minute warning. I'm exhausted today and not only will the cooking and cleaning have to happen under their watchful eye, but they'll wake up and wander around a house that's messier than *I* like to live in and it's my mess. Oh well, their punishment for being early is a dirty bathroom. Take that, Mom!

It is still exciting to have it finally be here. I just hope that Tim can hold out. I can only imagine what it's like to be woken at 4:30am by the arrival of your in-laws. --shudder--

Merry Christmas, everyone.