Christmas Letter 2014
December
6, 2014
Dear You
Guys,
Today I
walked into the kitchen to see Whitney working on some meaningless, Common Core,
language arts homework. So like any good parent, I taunted her. “You know what’s great about being a grown
up?” I said. “You only have ONE writing
assignment a year, and the subject is always the same - ‘What we did this
year….Merry Christmas’ And you actually get a better grade if it’s short.”
Despite my paucity of homework, I still procrastinated writing this.
And speaking
of Whitney, she’s 11 now and getting all tweeny on us. She is mortified by the very existence of her
parents. I think she tells her friends that
she was created in a government cloning experiment, and that we’re just some
people the NIH hired to look after her and to monitor her super powers. It’s fun to drop her off at school while
playing “old music” (from the 80s) loudly on the radio and yelling, “I love
you!” when she gets out of the car.
And
speaking of the 80s, when I was growing up I loved the “Calvin and Hobbs” comic
strips. I used to think how great it
would be to someday have a son just like Calvin. Dane is the perfect fulfillment of that wish.
They even have the same haircut. But as
with all genie wishes, he comes with a blessing and a curse. Here are some of the weird things Dane said
and did this last year:
December 2013 – After not getting a roll at dinner because he
wouldn’t eat his soup, Dane wrote me the following letter: “DEAR DAD,
I HAYTE YOU. LOVE DANE.”
December
2013 – We arrived to church on time for once and got some soft bench seats up
front. (We’re usually late and sit in the back with the non-tithe payers.) This
must have been the first time Dane could actually see the guys preparing the
sacrament, because when they uncovered the bread to bless it he said, “Look!
They’re gonna do a magic trick!”
February
2014 – Michelle was down in Dane’s face, scolding him for something, and he
yelled, “SILENCE!” He immediately walked
himself to the naughty chair without being asked.
April
2014 – Post on my Facebook wall: “Dane
was in trouble tonight, but I think I bailed him out. I just told Michelle, ‘If you’re gonna take a
6 year old boy to a ballet recital, you can’t expect him NOT to make farting
noises every time the dancers prance across the stage. And you can’t expect his grandpa not to
laugh.’”
July
2014 – Every prayer Dane said this month included: “Please bless Dad, that he won’t get sued or
fired, and that his butt will feel better.”
August 2014 – Dane’s Sunday school teachers brought rice
crispy treats for the class today. Dane told them they tasted like “shoe
leather and slugs mixed with snail guts.”
He got another trip to the naughty chair for bad manners when he got
home.
November
2014 – Our kids have year round school and have a month long break in November,
but most of their friends are still in school.
Today we drove past their school and Dane saw some kids on the playground,
stuck his head out the window and yelled, “So long, suckers!”
November
2014 – I tried to introduce my kids to James Bond. We were watching the opening credits for “From
Russia With Love”, with the silhouetted dancing ladies, and Dane said, “Hey!
This is portography!” We’re not allowed
to watch James Bond at our house anymore.
November
2014 – While getting ready to go to Grandma’s house for his uncle’s birthday
party:
“Dane,
are you excited to go the Uncle Mikey’s birthday party?”
“Yeah,
but I hope there aren’t any drugs.”
And speaking
of writing down funny things people say, I tried to do that with Michelle this
year, too. But she just kept saying,
“Stop following me around!” “Leave me
alone!” and “Stop sneaking up on me in the shower like Norman Bates.” I didn’t get much material out of her. I guess we’re both getting less entertaining
as we enter middle age, kind of like Jim Carey. But that’s OK; we still plan on
living a long, boring life together.
So
there’s my homework for the year. Merry
Christmas. I hope you all give me a good
grade. Come to think of it, you guys can’t
really help me get into graduate school, so it doesn’t really matter what you
think. So long, suckers!
Love,
K.C.,
Michelle, Whitney and Dane