The Year of the Teacup Piggie

(or What I Did On My Christmas Vacation)

Somewhat cool that my first post of 2011 will be my 101st post ever. Not really cool, I guess...a little interesting...okay, not really interesting either...

About the title...

Morgan has been telling me what she wanted from Santa since this summer. It revolved around a Pillow Pet and a "spy kit". The spy kit has something to do with (1) a boy at daycare and (2) my cousin Neil, but I had nothing else to go on in that arena.

This should not be confused with her Christmas Wish List, which was at least 2 pages long...single-spaced...8 pt font. Every page in the Toys R Us and Target catalogs was marked up at both our house and Nana's.

So, naturally, I was well-prepared this shopping season.

That is until Santa came to Crocker Park for a visit and we stopped in. The Friday before Christmas. All other shopping completed.

Santa to Zoe: What would like for Christmas?
Zoe: A baby...and a stroller for my baby...and clothes for my baby...and diapers for my baby...
Santa: Got it...
Santa to Morgan: And what about you?
Morgan: A Teacup Piggie.

WTF???!!!

Okay...not panicking...there was an entire end-cap full of them at Walgreens last week. I head out on Tuesday. None left at Walgreens...hmmm....head over to ToysRUs Express.

Me: Do you have any of those Teacup Piggies left?
Dude (holding back hysterical laughter): Are you f-ing crazy?? As soon as we toy stores figured out the kids wanted them, we pulled them from the shelves and started selling them for three times their value on Amazon through the guise of independent retailers.

Okay, so he didn't say that. He was actually very pleasant and wished me luck.

Fortunately, this story actually has a happy ending because the Teacup Piggie had also been circled in Nana Turtle's catalog and she had been on the hunt a couple weeks earlier with a final stop at Amazon. Teacup Piggie, I come to find out, was already wrapped and ready. Disaster averted.

We kept up with the tradition we started last year of gathering with friends on the 30th instead of New Year's Eve. This year we invited a few couples over to our house for appetizers and drinks and I'm happy to report there was no drunken texting to my co-workers as per the year 2009.

On the other hand...we played something called The Game of Things...which was only mildly entertaining until someone (and I won't name names, but I'm married to him) gave the answer "my testicles" and things went horribly obscene from there. Thank God!

I also had pictures to post of my first Easybake Oven experience, but I'm just too damn lazy to download them. It wasn't pretty. Trust me.

Since we had a random heatwave two days ago, Scott was able to take down all the exterior illumination, which means I can stop counting how many times the Santa blow mold falls off the porch due to the Arctic blast coming off the lake.

Things I didn't get to on my vacation:

• Snow Days at Progressive Field.
• Hanging all those pictures up that came down when we painted our stairway a year ago.
• Sending Christmas cards. They are addressed, so I'm still going to send them. Screw it.
• Sorting through the basement toys.
• Potty train Zoe. A well-intentioned effort. Just didn't take.

On the other hand, I got to go to a funeral...so I got that going for me...which is nice.