Christmas Traditions: The kids strike back.

I've been yelled at a lot for falling behind lately. Sorry, I'm working on it. I have a lot to say, just no motivation or time to sit down and say it.

The years following "The Super Nintendo Incident" brought many Christmas back-and-forths between my mother and I. I would say that I got the best of the back-and-forth, but I'm sure that she would probably see them landing more in her favor.

Mom pretends as though I tortured her, but truth be told she enjoyed it. She'd never let on of course, but she did. The Christmas after I went "away" to school(ASU is only 40 minutes drive from my parent's) I wasn't home as much to mess with my mom, and I thought that at age 18 maybe it was time to let it go. Sure enough though, the closer it got to Christmas the more she started calling.

"You know, there's a lot of presents under the tree. When are you going to come see them?"
"There's a new big present under the tree. Do you want to come shake it?"
"You haven't guessed ANY of your presents yet"

My dad finally called and told me that I should at least come over sometime and harass mom a little. It just wouldn't be Christmas without it.

This year, Miranda decided to take over my duties of messing with mom. Her plan was to continually refer to the 24th as Christmas instead of the 25th.

"Hey mom, what time are we opening presents on Sunday?"
"Oh, probably around ni... wait, we're opening presents on Monday. Monday is Christmas"

"I invited Geremy over to have ham with us on Sunday after presents."
"Oh, okay... No... No... No... Presents are on Monday."

Miranda, finally having earned the right to be called my sister, kept this up for the entire week. By the Friday preceding Christmas she had clued me in and I called a few times to ask mom about our plans for Sunday, but by that time she was on to it and just dismissed me. Since I wanted to join in on the fun too I came up with a plan and called Mory.

We got together on Saturday with a few empty boxes of things that would be presents for us if we didn't already have them, wrapped them up, and placed them neatly under the tree. For my part, I brought my Wii box and a couple of games.

Sunday morning I showed up bright and early. Mom was on the couch when Miranda came out and we both started shouting about presents. Miranda finally picked up a big one(An empty Wii box) and tossed it across the room to me. I tore through the wrapping and cheered. As I did so, mom stormed out of the room, "Fine, open all of your freaking presents. See if I care"

I chased her down the hall feeling slightly bad since she was visibly upset.

"Hey mom, remember playing Wii with me over Thanksgiving?"
"Yeah"

I held the box up to her once again and gave her a second until it finally all fell in place. She tried to stay upset for a second, but a smile quickly came through.