The Unexpected Christmas

Well after significant prepping, more weather stripping, moving furniture, making beds, buying more rugs and then more rugs again, some fun igloo tents from ikea for the kids to play in, plenty of flashlights and nightlights, and Christmas decorating later.....
The invasion began.
The Thursday before Christmas my folks were arriving so I took the day off and had the electrician come out to ground some more outlets and put in the grounding rods for the whole house, we also investigated this one outlet that worked when we moved in but stopped after two weeks--turns out it was connected to the above light switch in such a way so that when the light was on the outlet didn't work, but you could get power there if you turned the light off. weird weird weird. so while we could have it sorta hooked up, the electrician said that if we were cool without using that outlet (there are two others in the room) that he'd prefer to disconnect it completely just to be on the safe side. Also while the guys were there, the little light over the shower in the lovely bathroom drop ceiling went out for good--usually it only goes out when I'm in the shower which is extra creepy so they checked that and said something that sounded like thermo something had reached the end of it's life cycle and they could replace if I wanted. well I hate this drop ceiling so while he was up there, we investigated the original ceiling, found the plaster to be in good shape and that the original lighting wires were in good shape and we could just toss up a light fixture in the middle where it was initially so I made the executive decision to just disconnect that light, I never liked it much anyways and the lights over the sink are super bright enough to cover the whole bathroom. Side note--this executive decision that I made without consultation has gotten me into a little trouble, seems some folks who get nervous in the dark actually really appreciated having a switch in the hall to the bathroom as opposed to having to walk into a dark bathroom to hit the switch. No worries though, this has since been remedied with a light sensitive nightlight.
Also pre-parents was the chimney man who gave me some hope about having a wood burning insert put in and lining the boiler chimney. And after this last gas bill, I think an alternative heating source like a wood burning fireplace will be necessary....but we'll get to that later.

So here's a quick list of the many unexpected happenings this Christmas....

1. Feeding 14 people is ALOT OF WORK. sheesh, not only do they want Christmas dinner but they need breakfast, lunch, snacks, drinks, blah blah blah. We planned and we shopped, but there was need for more.
2. Sadly, very few Christmas cookies got made. this is really a damn shame because my mom's got some of the best cookie recipes in the world, and we usually spend the day or two before Christmas making them but there were other things to attend to...like home depot, bj's, and a day's work rehanging the crazy room's door so my brother and sister-in-law could actually shut it in a normal way...
3. Cold blooded relatives. Sheesh, can you believe we had folks complaining about needing sweaters and hats on in the house? There were actual bribes for higher temperatures. I mean it's not like you could see your breath, now THAT would have been extreme, but who doesn't wear a hat in the house in winter? whiners... of course we gave in, I mean, it was Christmas...
4. Weird bugs--apparently some folks have not been inundated with those weirdo dinosaur bugs that are beetle-ish looking, can fly, but are mostly lazy and sluggish and easy to catch and release or send sleeping with the fishes. In my old place there were tons living in the ivy outside the building but here, we've seen maybe half a dozen since moving in, and none have been in the last month, well well well guess who makes two appearances? One on the toilet paper that mom found in the middle of the night (before, she found it before, relax). The other, my brother-in-law located, killed, and examined very very closely--he was afraid it would suck blood.
5. Short sheeting, so my brother and his wife were supposedly bringing an air mattress to put on top of the twin beds we had on the floor for them (on the floor so they could sleep together) because they thought they'd want more height to their sleeping siutation. so we didn't make their beds, we just left sheets for a queen in their room. Well, they never put the air mattress up and we all forgot about them needing sheets and they never asked, didn't make a peep--not ONE complaint out of them for anything which was very very nice considering everyone else had an opinion about most things... so they get the most accommodating guest awards.
6. Hidden cats, for anyone who's met my cats you may have seen just how well trained they are, I've done everything possible since they were kittens to "kid proof" my cats, you can rub them the wrong way, pat them on the head really hard, pat them on the back equally as hard, pull on their paws and tails, etc and there's no hissing, no biting, no attempts to scratch. They are so great, but what I didn't train them for was to be approached by little excited people waving their hands and saying "HI KITTY! HI KITTY! HI KITTY!" that was really unexpected for them so they ran away and hid mostly in the third floor closet...poor Stormey, he could have gotten so much lovin if he had only come out to visit.
7. Speaking of cats, apparently we didn't have the right kind of litter set up because now there's a new electronic one that's nice but requires a lot of attention...
8. Quite possibly the crem de la crem (sp?) of unexpected events was the visit to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. It would appear that my little munchkin of a nephew (Mr. HI KITTY) who's just 4 and maybe 35-40 pounds soaking wet, well he's got asthma and now we know for sure he's also allergic to cats. He had asthma meds but was on more of a "rescue" med regime rather than the control meds and his rescue meds would only help him so much so Christmas eve after our pizza dinner and being asked by our 6 year old niece infront of all the guests "So when are you guys getting married?" we took a road trip to CHOP so my sister, her husband and little man could go to the ER. Five hours later and we find out that he's doing well but has only plateaued rather than fully recovered so they're keeping him overnight. Santa packs up the car to drop off some presents and pick up daddy so he can be home for Christmas morning.
We all make another road trip to visit little man on Christmas day to find out that a special Santa also visited him in the hospital while he was sleeping and delivered even more presents. That's when I really fell in love with CHOP, they really went over and above and it seemed like their regular routine...
9. Another funny unexpected anecdote was that the Santa who visited us at church after Christmas eve mass, well, his pants fell down and thank goodness he had on another pair under them because he didn't notice at first and walked down the altar with his pants around his ankles. It was hilarious.
10. Can we top off this list with another to round it out? Ah yes, well the week after Christmas, we spent most of it relaxing but one thing we noticed was that the room my folks were staying in actually didn't have the storm windows down...and it was sorta cold in there...oops!