Sneeze the Day: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and May all Your Mail be Personal

Personal mail is what you get from people you know and maybe sort of like, right?

My family thoroughly enjoyed Christmas vacation.

We read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and loved it as much as we have every year for...a lot of years. I didn't crack up as hard as I did the first time we read that the Herdmans' idea of a game was to try and squash each other with their garage door, but I enjoyed other aspects of the book even more. The first-person narrator, Beth Bradley (I think), has a lot of personality even though she doesn't actually do much. (The book tells of only one time she physically reacts to something: when Alice Wendleken says she's going to tell her mom about the problems with Beth's mom's pageant. "There wasn't much I could do about, except pinch Alice, which I did." I think even that is fantastic in terms of showing character.) The other characters are realistic and lovable too. The Herdmans are terrible, terrible people, but I love that the book explicitly says they're the worst children in the history of ever, I love that even they have some good in them, and I love that they change by the end. I also love that we started Christmas morning, not by tearing open presents, but by finishing the book. It was a real change of pace, eating a sleepy breakfast at the table then moving to the couch for some read-aloud BEFORE calmly opening presents. We sure know how to liven things up around here.

We experienced the same hectic insanity on New Year's Eve. We went, of all places, into our car. And THEN to Walmart, if you can believe that. Before we knew it, we were attracting stares as we organized a chorus of talking toys called Sing-a-ma-jigs meant for three-year-olds. We moved our calamity to the craft isles where we spelled out festive phrases with wooden letters. We rounded off our escapades by buying me one of the Sing-a-ma-jigs (whom I named Bobo), a stuffed Pooh Bear toy, an Alice in Wonderland key chain, and...POP! Soda pop. Then we went home. No doubt you've already read about it in the tabloids. No? Well! I feel snubbed.

I loved New Year's Eve just as much as Christmas morning, truth be told.

But it's over now. It's a new year, and I feel like I should put a new picture at the top of my blog. I did put a pic at the bottom of the blog. See it?

Anyway, in other news, I saw a new trailer for Paul a while back, and I withdraw my endorsement. It looks awful.

Here's a trailer for a movie called Hanna. It looks alright.