Y'see, I shot my schedule in the foot, so to speak. The Oracle and I made the foolish promise to allow our kids to "camp out" in the living room the night before. This stemmed from an overnight "adventure" on which Mighty B. and The Oracle spent a "guys' night" at House Fairy's and DEB's. I'm not even sure why they did that, but Mighty B. has been wanting to do it again. Precious Daughter wanted to give it a try too.
Anyway, conversations on the subject evolved into "camping out" in the living room with their air mattresses, and they've been hounding me weekly to do it. A couple weeks ago, I relented, and promised them they could do it on their first night of Christmas break, selling the point with the fact that the Christmas tree would be up and could stay lit all night.
Sick and snotty as they are, they insisted upon keeping the arrangement, thereby thwarting my efforts to finish late-night last-minute tasks. They were up rustling around until after 11:00. Even more amazing is that Mighty B. was up bright and early at 7:00 as usual.
Precious Daughter had a slower start and so did I. We finished breakfast, I puttered around a bit, and around 10:00 I heard sirens. My first thought was that the layer of ice coating everything earlier that morning caused a nasty accident. Then Precious Daughter started shouting and scrambling into shoes. "Santa's coming!!!"
Oh, yes! How could I forget? Every year the local fire company assembles a large procession and escorts Santa and Mrs. Claus up and down the streets of their service area. Precious Daughter sensibly chose her winter boots and allowed me to get a coat on her back before scrambling outside. Mighty B., still in his pajamas, threw on sandals and ran outside without a coat, and I just about had a conniption. I had to chase him down to put the thing on. Thankfully, the early-morning ice had melted by then.
They waited eagerly at the end of the driveway as the sirens approached, Mighty B doing so with his knees jiggling back and forth, but he wouldn't hear of throwing on sweat pants. At last, they could see the flashing red lights and started jumping up and down. The first truck rounded the corner. The second was pulling Santa's sleigh, and he waved the kids forward to give them little gifts.
Santa turned the corner, and the rest of the "parade" followed, lights flashing and sirens blaring.
I'm glad I live in a fun neighborhood.
I know I've fallen behind on posting, but I hope to get more done in the next couple of days. Bear with me!
4 comments:
How FUN!!! Little kids are so cute and get so excited about things like this. Oh, I miss that. Enjoy, my friend, time goes by much too quickly!
I remember our first Christmas in Langhorne. Living, as we did, near so many major roads, sirens were not an unusual sound. So when we heard sirens on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, we thought a quick prayer towards whoever it was that just had a major blow to their holiday cheer, and went on with trying to talk mom and Dad into toast for dinner.
Then the sirens turned down our street. We ran outside to see what was going on, only to see Santa on the back of the ladder truck, and every other truck in the station following behind.
I miss that down here in Florida. Of course, I live on a narrow, dead-end road, so it would be less parade and more crash-waiting-to-happen, but Bonnie would enjoy the noise and lights!
Oh, how fun!
They didn't do that on my end of Langhorne. But then, we were on a dead-end street.
Stacy says:
I LOVE this part of Christmas. I missed it in Wyoming. But they do it here, and they did it at my mom's. They used to do it Christmas Eve, but now they do it a few days before. They did it on the 21st this year. They have a detour up in our housing this year, and all the traffic has to come by my house, it's the only way in and the only way out. So, we heard the trucks, and Willow got up and jumped to the door only to see them speeding past! We thought we missed it. Then I realized that they were going to start at the back of our section and work their way out again slower. And that's what happened.
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