tim and lisa cocking

Our kids have been just AWFUL to each other for the past couple of weeks. Even Santa-related threats have been ineffective. For several days before Christmas, every time they’d start to get after each other Tim would say, “Lump of coal…” in a really ominous voice. It became a bit of a joke–they were even saying it to each other after a while.

Christmas eve, Tim went to the railroad tracks near our home, where the trains take coal to the local power plant. The coal is transported in big open hopper cars, and bits fall out all the time. He picked up a few pieces of coal for the girls, and that was the first thing they found on Christmas morning! They all knew it was a joke, and seemed to think it was pretty funny.

While we’re on the subject of Christmas, etc., can I just say that Santa Claus does not end with an “e”? “The Santa Clause” is a movie. A clause is a word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and a predicate (thanks, Wikipedia), or a part of a contract. Claus is the name of the guy in red. I think everyone who misspells it should get a lump of coal!

(Okay, I’ll stop ranting now.)

Many years ago, my mom and I started a tradition of getting together for one day every December and baking cookies. We think we started doing this around 1990 or 1991, but we can’t remember exactly. For the past few years it’s been a half-hearted effort (when we even tried at all), since having little kids around made it pretty difficult.

Now that the girls are all in school, we have re-instituted Cookie Day. My parents came over from Tampa on Tuesday afternoon; mom and I made our shopping list and went out Tuesday evening to get everything we needed. Wednesday morning around 8:45 we started baking. We finished around 4:00.

Click on the picture to see a larger version of the nearly 29 dozen cookies and 8 pounds of candy we made. Not pictured are almost 4 dozen chocolate-dipped dried apricots that we did as an afterthought. We set a personal record for our most productive Cookie Day ever.

My parents went to Disney World with two other couples a few days ago (so they’re all kids at heart). One of the other couples was separated from the group on a ride at the Magic Kingdom, and it took about 10 minutes afterward for them all to meet up again. In this 10 minute period right after getting off the ride, this other couple was approached by a Disney Cast Member and told, “You’ve won a night at Cinderella’s Castle for yourself and five friends!” You just read that correctly: my parents’ friends won the “Year of a Million Dreams” daily grand prize! But get this: THEY TURNED IT DOWN. Once again, you’ve read that correctly: my parents’ friends said no to a night in Cinderella’s castle.

I guess they’ve been getting a lot of calls from resorts and time shares with the typical “You’ve won a free night at our resort, but you have to sit through 18 hours of sales pitches” type of calls and thought this was the same kind of thing. How they hadn’t heard about this promotion in the huge media blitz that’s gone on for the past year I don’t know, but somehow they’d missed it. And so they missed out on something that any other person in the park that day would probably have given their right arm to be able to do.

The Cast Member was stunned. No one had ever turned them down before.

By the time the group reunited, it was too late. A release form had been signed and it was all over with. All except the relentless teasing they had to put up with all day from their friends, especially my dad.