Merry Christmas, 2000!

OK, no long blabby blabby back story this week.  The poem is long enough.

Apparently I thought that friends and relatives had abso-frickin-lutely nothing else to do in the middle of December than read a million stanzas about our not that exciting family.  Maybe you should go take a No Doze.

Seriously, go take one.

Merry Christmas, 2000!

How do I begin?  Just where do I start??

I have so many wonderful things in my heart.

As I’m writing this poem I am starting to fear…

How will I ever top the one written last year??

♥

There’s so much that has happened,

This year has just flown!

Jon and I haven’t aged,

But the children have grown.

♥

When the first day of January 2000 came

We were glad to see life had remained much the same

We had lights, we had water, Y2K bug was over!

No need to buy T.P. ’til almost October!!!

♥

In March we went south to the great Sunshine state

We had a fun time and the weather was great.

In fact, it was one of the best trips we’ve had.

(And we didn’t see one single dangling chad.)

♥

In the spring “baby” Kolbe grew up and turned two.

She’s a “big guhl” and funny, with so much to do.

She plays “babies” and dollhouse and still loves to hide,

Her big eyes are still blue and her smile is still wide.

♥

She loves to watch movies and loves to “read” books.

She has Daddy’s big brain and Anna’s good looks.

We all tease her and tell her she laughs like a pony,

Then she tries to look mad, but we all know it’s phony.

♥

Our Anna turned twelve in the middle of June.

She has grown up so fast, she’s a lady too soon!

Her Barbies packed up, baby dolls put away;

Now there’s shopping and lip gloss and CD’s to play.

♥

She likes her new school, has some friends and is happy

She’s as tall as her mom and as kind as her pappy.

There’s a bright side to twelve, besides all the face glitter

Jon and I now have our own built-in baby sitter!

♥

In July we went north and explored the U.P.

When we helped a friend move there with her family

Then we went to the island they call Mackinac.

They have more fudge and horse poop than we ever saw!

♥

Also that month poor Jon turned forty-one

And I tried to assure him his life’s just begun.

Since he won’t act or look old, I think there’s a mis-count.

Only fourteen years left till he gets senior discount!

♥

When we finished our homeschool year, sometime in May,

The tired mom and the kiddies all shouted “Hooray!!”

Later on that same night, getting ready for bed,

She looked into their faces and wearily said…

♥

“My darlings, I love you but a school we must find.

If we don’t, your poor mommy will lose her wee mind!”

So we found a nice place with some very nice teachers

And the children there seem to be nice little creatures.

♥

Late in August with new shoes and uniforms bought

(Sending two kids to school costs much more than I’d thought)

I drove Anna and Ben to their new non-home school

And each morning for two weeks I cried like a fool.

♥.

Then one day a thought hit me, it came like a flash,

(And, of course, all my best thoughts involve spending cash)

While my Anna and Ben are both out seeking knowledge

I will get me some, too, I will go finish college!

♥

Ben turned five in September and he’s busier than four.

He is so fun to watch, makes us wish we’d had more.

He loves school, Star Wars “guys,” all the planets and sky.

He cracks jokes like a grown-up and loves to ask “why?”

♥

Each day I drop off my sweet boy with blonde hair

He leaps out of the van and yells “Go park somewhere!”

Sad to say, my dear Ben believes I don’t go far.

He thinks I spend all day in that lot, in my car.

♥

Autumn has blown, but not near hard enough!

Our leaves aren’t yet raked and here comes the white stuff!!

We just cannot believe that this year’s almost gone.

We’ve just put up the tree (still ignoring the lawn!)

♥

So here comes the New Year, let’s just see how it goes.

We await all the joys and accept all the woes.

We will work with what God sends and make our own “groove”

Maybe this is the year we can finally move!

♥

We’ve been given a great many wonderful things

From the Lord of all lords and the King of all kings.

First He gave us what seemed just a summer romance

That became a most excellent fourteen year dance.

♥

We have also been given three beautiful souls

To nourish and love and teach Heavenly goals.

We are trying to raise them the best that we can,

We’re a team of a poet and her loving man.

♥

We all hope you enjoy this most blessed of seasons

And whatever you do, just remember the reasons

That Jesus, Our Lord, came to live on this earth.

Yes, He wants you to know just how much your soul’s worth:

♥

He was willing to stretch His arms open so wide.

They put nails in His hands and He lovingly died.

He allowed this so that all His people would know

That He loves us and wants us and cares for us so.

♥

You are in our thoughts, in our hearts and in our prayers.  Have a safe and holy Christmas Season!

So no back story but since you took a No Doze, you’re wide awake so you might as well read this little non-backstory story.

In December 1999 there was an epidemic of Chicken Little Syndrome.  Lots of people expected that life as we knew it would cease to exist when we rang in the New Year because computers were only programmed with a “1” in the thousands place.  It was constantly in the news, called the Y2K Bug.  Year 2000, 2K… get it?  Lots of smart people believed this and sadly some dumb ones, too.  Dumb ones, like maybe, I dunno, us.

In our defense we did live waaaay out in the country then and the wood-burning stove was actually not a bad purchase.  It kept the house toasty and it was beautiful.  I went a little nutty with the size of it so I could have a cooking surface, ya know, for when my oven didn’t work because of the Y2K bug.  I purchased lots of extra food, which we used, except for the rice and soybeans.  Ah, yes!  In addition to all of the canned goods and bottled water, I bought 100 lbs of rice and 100 lbs of soybeans.  We used a brand new space-aged kitchen appliance called a vacuum sealer to seal it in small air-tight packages, which turned into little bricks.  I felt like I was running a NASA operation.  All of these bricks were then stored in a huge pantry in our basement.  We were all set.

Yep, no… joke’s on us.

The field mice were all set.

The little bastidges made their winter home in our basement, unbeknownst to us.  It seems they didn’t like our method of storing the soybeans so they somehow managed to get into the giant Rubbermaid totes, rip open the vacuum sealed bags and re-distributed about half of it.  We found impressive stockpiles of soybeans all over that house, the garage and the barn.  In fact, we found these piles in boxes of toys and Christmas decorations long after our family moved to a new city.

Can you say “ewwwwwww?”

I would also like to point out that I took very little license in constructing this year’s poem.  Kolbe actually did laugh like a pony and we teased her about it.  Even then Kolbe had the sweetest disposition and took our teasing with a giggling heart.  She is so very good natured.

I also did not exaggerate about Ben jumping out of the van in the car-pool drop off lane each day and ordering me to go park somewhere.  Some days he would even watch out the window to see that I was, indeed, parking the van so that if he decided that school was boring he could, I dunno, send a minion out to the car to get me so he could go home, I guess.  To this day he is still “the man with a plan.”  Love that child.

Anna really did grow taller than me that year, in fact, she still teases me about being taller and she is like 53 years old now.  Ben teases me, too, because he also towers over me.  I don’t see the fun in this but they enjoy it so what’s a short mom to do?  Kolbe compares her height to mine on a weekly basis.  Alas, it won’t be long before all of my kids are taller than me.  Does this mean they will no longer be terrified of me?  Perish the thought!

I confess that I totally lied about the T.P.  We didn’t have enough to last us to October, it just rhymed.  We only had enough to get us through the first week in May.  I shudder to think what would have happened if Y2K actually did happen and we only had four months of toilet paper.  It would have been ugly.  I guess by then we would have eaten all the canned goods and moved on to the rice and soybeans.  We probably would have noticed the soybean security breach and so we would have been living on rice only so maybe we wouldn’t have needed T.P. quite so much.  It is all just too scary to think about for very long.

So if you’ve read this far I owe you an apology.  I added a backstory.   I am sorry.

Curse this verbal diarrhea.  I tried not to.  I really did.  Oh well.

Whadya gonna do?  Have one of my towering children put the hurt on me?