The holidays are behind us.

Most people are heaving big sighs of relief, because no matter how hard we try to make it otherwise, it’s a stressful, busy time of year.  Our household is no exception.

But there are always little nuggets of time that become good memories we’ll never forget.  It’s not the “required appearances” that we remember, though, but rather things that just happen, things that make us laugh, things that bring smiles to our hearts or tears of joy to our eyes.

I had a bunch of them this year:

This was our cat Blue’s “first” Christmas.  The Christmas tree was absolutely the most wonderful thing he had ever seen.  All those dangly things to attack; he was like a kid in a candy shop. 

But there was this one stuffed velvet ornament with “I Love Christmas” sewn on it that he found particularly irresistible.  He would whack at it until it sailed across the room, lie in wait, then pounce on it and bat it throughout the house.  Everyday I’d find it in a different room and knew that Blue had had a rendezvous with the Christmas tree again.  It should have upset me, but it didn’t.  Blue just loved Christmas, just like the ornament said.

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My boys both received one of those tiny remote control cars for Christmas.  The best memory was not watching these big “kids” (the older one is 22) play with twinkles in their eyes, or of the cats chasing them, or my son dropping his in water and having to dry it with a blow dryer.  No, it was when my daughter picked it up, my son revved the engine, and her hair got caught in it. 

Picture this little car sitting on top of a head in a mess of tangles and you sort of get the idea.  We envisioned not being able to get it out and her having to go to school with this car stuck to her head.  Still makes me laugh when I think about it.  (We got it out.)

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Then there was the Pictionary game we played Christmas night until the wee hours of the morning.  My son will never live down the clock he drew.  His group was guessing “spaceship!” and “snail”, while our group was guessing “time!” and “clock!”  I thought he had read the word wrong.  Everything after that was funny.

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New Year’s Day we met my parents at the movie theater.  We met at one of those huge cinamaplexes with twenty-four theatres and acres of parking lots.

After the show was over, we walked out into the sea of cars and I had absolutely no recollection of where we parked our car.  I turned to my husband for guidance and saw a blank stare.  Then my parents fessed up that they couldn’t remember where their car was either.  We were all hopelessly lost.

My college-aged daughter knew exactly where her vehicle was, but she was riding with us to go eat afterwards.  She rolled her eyes. Oh, woe is her that is stuck with four old people wandering aimlessly around a parking lot. 

We joked that we could just wait until everybody else left, then the two cars that were left would be ours.

We finally found our car, but my folks were still wheel-less.  They drive a blue Ford Explorer.  Do you know how many people drive blue Ford Explorers?  (But we finally found it.)

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That’s all I have room for.  I hope your holidays were great, and remember, if something bad happens, just wait awhile … you’ll be able to laugh about it later!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!