This morning as we were barreling down the freeway my children began to sing the Twelve Days of Christmas because really, Christmas is a mere four months away!! This delightfully repetitive and obnoxious song that is pretty much the holiday equivalent of 99 bottles of beer on the wall began to evolve after about the third time around, and all of the gifts changed from leaping lords and dancing milkmaids or whatever they are to the following:

12 giant flytraps
11 hobo spiders
10 boxes of lice
9 pterodactyls
8 rising mummies
7 T Rexes
6 hungry zombies
5-headed dragons
4 spraying skunks
3 thorny devils
2 stinging scorpions
1 velociraptor

So that’s festive, right? I particularly like the use of appropriate adjectives like “rising” mummies (for when the regular mummies just won’t do). Now, I realize this looks suspiciously like something that Georgie would come up with alone, but I’m fairly sure that the girls were back there envisioning this monstrosity right along with him. I mean really. Is this what you want for Christmas??

Venus Fly Trap, although I think they may have been envisioning something more like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.

Hobo Spider, which is our very large, local, nasty, poisonous one.

Lice, which I’m sure we all know enough about to detest.

Pterodactyl, which I always thought of as rather charming dinosaurs until I saw Jurassic Park III.

Rising Mummy = never good. This is me (or my body double) being threatened by a rising mummy:

Happily, this guy should be coming along any moment to rescue me.

I wonder how good Brendan Fraser does against these:

Zombies ~ ugly yes, but they move soooo slow. Oh no, what could be fast enough to escape them?? Stilts? Pogo sticks? Tricycles??

Five-headed dragon, which will be represented today by a drawing of a Hydra. Georgie will like that.

Skunk buns. Just what I always wanted for Christmas!

Thorny Devil. Call me crazy, but I think these guys are kind of cute. They certainly beat out skunk butt and zombie woman.

Stinging scorpions. Nope, not cute!

Velociraptor: cute until they slice you open with their giant middle claw and eat your guts while you’re still alive. And thank you, Steven Spielberg, for delivering that very important information to little rabid dinosaur-loving boys everywhere.

I better not get any of these things for Christmas. Of course, when I was a teenager my brother gave me a piece of moldy bread he had been growing in a jar in his closet for three months specifically for the occasion (he partitioned the box and put the actual gift in the other side). I don’t know that spraying skunk could smell much worse than that.

Rachel

Tonight my wonderful children decided to put on a play. They do this occasionally, most often at Christmas time when they feel an urgent need to perform the Nutcracker every day for a month. Since they are now old enough to have figured out that this, alas, is nowhere near Christmas time, they needed a more summer-appropriate performance. When my son came this morning and asked if I had any ideas, I think my response resembled a troll grunt well enough that he decided perhaps figuring something out himself might be safer.

Later in the afternoon, he bounded in (I think he’s genetically incapable of walking) to tell me that they were going to do the story of Jesus but a little different. Hoping this wasn’t going to be completely sacrilegious, I bored holes through his skull with my eyes until he elaborated that there was only going to be one shepherd and things like that due to umm, casting problems (he and two sisters comprise the entire Shubin acting guild). Okay, that’s no big deal. Off he went to go rehearse. I didn’t point out to him that this was still a Christmas play.

Hubby arrived home, and after dinner it was time for the play. To mimic a barn floor, the children had covered the entire cement patio in dirt, which they had carefully swept around with a broom to make it even. Trinity had a little manger and dolly to complete her Mary theme, and Georgie was in the yard herding grasshoppers… or grass… or something.

Anika in her Belle costume (from Beauty and the Beast) jumped onto the trampoline to proclaim the good news (she was the angel) to Georgie, which served as the cue for him to run up to the deck and throw her the new costume for her wardrobe change (new costume was a karate uniform, which I’m sure the Gospel of Mark mentions Joseph wearing to intimidate the ninja warriors hired by Herod…). While Anika repositioned herself beside Mary, Georgie prepared his shepherd gift, a gift fit for the King.

In he gravely walked (after knocking on the invisible door) and knelt down on bended knee, opened the chest containing the priceless treasure, and in awe we all beheld…. the butter knife. At this part I started giggling uncontrollably (which the kids didn’t seem to appreciate) and couldn’t stop until about five minutes after the play finished. Actually, I’m still giggling a little bit.

Hubby, on the other hand, immediately began asking impertinent questions: “Is it a sword?”

“No, it’s a knife”

“Is it the dagger from Lord of the Rings?”

{Mommy giggles}

“No, it’s just a dagger”

“Is it the sword of Excalibur?”

{Mommy hides her face in a blanket so the kids won’t see the tears}

“NO, IT’S JUST A KNIFE!”

Then Georgie left to go get the second gift. And down on bended knee, he again presented Mary with the priceless treasure… hey, what is that? It was getting dark, and the gift looked like a circular object about two inches in diameter. We started guessing:

Me: Is it a rock?

Hubby: Is it a pirate medallion?

Me: Is it a police badge?

The kids never even bothered to answer, but I’m pretty sure it was a thunder egg slice that Trinity got for her birthday last year. I don’t think any of the kids could remember what it was called. 

And that was the end of the play. So now we know that the thing that baby Jesus wanted the most was neither gold, frankincense, myrrh, or a little boy with a drum to play an annoying song but rather was a butter knife. Maybe next year He’ll get a tea set!

Rachel