The Christmas Eve That Could

The days leading up to Christmas are always a tad stressful.  You know the story of the little engine that could? It looked like he would fail but the engine kept on plugging away until he reached his goal.  My goal was a fun day finished off with a relaxing bath.

It didn't start off too bad. The alarm didn't go off, so Eric was later than planned at the work site.  Luckily, attendance was not mandatory on Christmas Eve.  No, the house isn't done yet.  Sigh.  The girls and I went to a family Christmas party at a church building.  That was fun minus Maya crying her face off when anyone else so much as looked at her.  Oh, and losing Ellie in a strange church close to a busy road.  Twice.  But it was really cute watching Ellie "play" the organ for everyone to sing along when she wasn't hiding in the nursery.

Shopping for stocking stuffers came after the party.  I couldn't decide what store to go to and drove around with the girls until Ellie chose a store and I backtracked to get there.  I had no desire to enter a Walmart the day before Christmas.  It's generally filled with women stressed to the breaking point and dazed-looking men who haven't done a lick of shopping.  Not a pretty picture.  Anyhow, the grocery store didn't look too terrible. The Christmas candy and toy aisles were kind of blocked up.  That I could deal with.  The rough part was the girls crawling over each other in the plastic car part of the cart.  That's not out of the ordinary, except this time they got tangled up and stuck beyond any hope of getting +out under their own steam.  The resulting screams caused other shoppers to abandon their carts or walk out of their checkout lines and stop the obvious child abuse going on in the main aisle.  No police were involved.

The children napped once we got home.  Sweet, sweet little girls.  I took a little computer break before gathering everything we needed to spend the night at Grandma's house.  As I thought about what I still needed it occurred to me that I had not received my mother-in-law's gift.  The tracking number said before 4:30 on the 24th, so I hadn't checked for it.  The time was 2:45.  I looked up the tracking number again and found that the package had been delivered the day before to a reception desk and signed for by someone named D Roberts.  Hmm...  There is a business that shares our street address but with the S and E switched.  They've previously received a package for me and I've previously received a package for them.  Grumble.  I called the shipping company to confirm where the package was delivered and drove to the warehouse where I assumed it was, hoping against hope that someone would be there.  At 3 pm on a Saturday...which was also Christmas Eve.  My hopes were not high.  No one was there.  The shipping company called me back twice to tell me what I feared; nothing could be done until Tuesday.  Because I'm pregnant I'm allowed to cry whenever I feel like it.  So I cried.  The tears really came when the lady told me they would be giving feedback to the driver's supervisor.  I told her I didn't want it to prevent anyone having a merry Christmas.  She told me it wouldn't.  So now I get to look forward to Tuesday when the driver will pick up the package from the business and then drive it over to me.  I'm afraid he'll actually wait at the door to deliver a personal apology.  Yeah, that wouldn't be awkward.

After we packed up and headed to my in-law's house I was able to relax a little.  We ate dinner, watched Cinderella with the girls, played with the dog, read the Christmas story, and got the girls ready for bed.  My brilliant plan was to get the girls to sleep (not a difficult task) and have a nice bath in their FABULOUS jetted tub while everyone else went downstairs to play a game.  We put the girls down at 8:30 and I anticipated being in a lovely soak by 9.  Ha!  Maya decided she didn't want to be asleep yet and started crying, which kept Ellie awake.  I cradled Maya on the big bed and willed them both to go to sleep.  When Maya finished her bottle she threw it aside and started babbling.  I heard a shooshing sound from Ellie's bed in the corner, followed by Maya giggling in my arms.  It was pretty cute, but not conducive to getting the girls to sleep.  Fast forward to 10 pm.  By this time I had Maya down in her bed, but Ellie was wide awake.  I was lying down on the wood floor next to Ellie's mattress and holding her hand, praying for the umpteenth time that she would just GO TO SLEEP so I could have my stupid bath.

By 10:30 both girls were off to dreamland and I was getting ready for a long soak.  I filled the tub with warm water and added a few bubbles.  After a full five seconds of bliss I decided to turn on the jets.  I found I didn't like them as well as I'd anticipated and the volume of bubbles had increased to as many as I wanted.  I pushed the button to turn the jets off.  They didn't turn off.  I pushed and I pushed and the jets kept going.  About the time the bubbles had risen above the rim of the tub I knew I was in trouble.  I opened the drain to keep the jets from churning out more bubbles, threw on some clothes, and ran down the stairs for reinforcements.  When I told them it was frothy I was not exaggerating.  The button was stuck enough that we had to cut power to the bathroom to shut the jets off.  I was told not to drain the tub.  Oops.

In the end I got my bath and had an enjoyable day.  Ellie did wake up at 1:30 and stay awake until 4:30, but that was technically Christmas day so it doesn't count here.  :)  I hope everyone had a great Christmas and has a happy new year.