Christmas in Pictures

Despite having 2 weeks off, the holidays were a blur - because time flew by and Dallas had its first white Christmas in 80 years. People in Dallas freak out when it rains, so imagine when snow actually sticks to the ground. I think people were burning their furniture to some how survive the cold in their climate controlled houses.

Benjamin still wasn't into the whole presents thing. We had to half unwrap each present for him to see the neat gizmo underneath, THEN he was interested. But even that was fleeting. Thinking back, Schmax was more into opening presents to the point where we had to pull him off a package or two. Mental note, don't wrap gifts in bacon.

I think what Benjamin truly enjoyed was having two people dote on him all day - which sets up nicely for a future entry about a soon to be 2-year old's budding attitude and pushing of his parent's buttons.

And now for the part that some of you are more interested in - pictures instead of my ramblings. If a picture is worth a thousand words, consider yourself rich in words!

We often read together as a family sitting side-by-side. Benjamin threw in the nice touch of looking up at me as if to say, "Pa-pa, I do love you so..."

Something about this pic reminded me of the first Superman movie, where little baby Kal-El is in his asteroid ship wearing a super-absorbent red and blue diaper.

Clearly the hilarity of fake sleeping for a picture is lost on Benjamin. Again, nice touch at least putting his head down on the blankie. Maybe in his mind he had 1st watch.

I love this photo. It says "Christmas Morning" to me in so many ways. And you can never tell that Benjamin had a dirty reindeer diaper.

EXTREMELY rare footage of a baby yeti.

Benjamin loved the idea of snow, until it blew into his face. And his shoes started to get cold and wet, because we don't have baby mucklucks. He also hated getting pelted by snowballs. To be fair, I did tell him numerous times to duck.

To give you an idea of how crazy the weather was, this picture was taken the next day. Benjamin is sitting in his sweet new ride - a spacious wagon complete with cup and snack holders. It gets terrible gas mileage though.

Doesn't it look like Benjamin and Emily stopped to admire a stuffed dog in this person's yard?

Turkey Day Without My Turkeys

Yeah, yeah, this is about Thanksgiving, which was a few months ago but I am a “businessman” which by definition means I’m a man that is busy. If this is too old for your reading pleasure, you have the freedom to stop reading here.

That’s what I thought.

The main delay for this entry is my instinct to combine prose with pictures of the event, and this is the only picture I actually took on Thanksgiving Day.

The Alexander’s called a last minute audible for the holiday where I would go to the Texas A&M vs UT game in College Station with a buddy of mine, and Emily and Benjamin would fly north to reenact the first Thanksgiving with her extended family in Shee-cog-goe.

When we put this plan into action there was an excited Dale getting to see the game and having the house to himself to do with what he pleased, and a excitedly reluctant Emily dreading traveling with an 18 month year old by herself.

I did the best I could packing up bags, giving what little tips I had to help weather the flight and loaded up an iPod Touch with little videos to act as visual morphine for Benjamin. Seeing him with white earbuds in his ears was cute, but it also looked like he had remedial hearing aids from the 80’s. I’m told the Touch worked great… for one flight. I’ll leave the rest of the “hilarity” for Emily to retell some day.

For fun I posted on Facebook something to the affect of “Hey it’s time to bachelor-it-up!” This was misinterpreted by many (including my wife) that I was setting sail on some kind of booze cruise through the sacred holiday break with a collision course toward sloth debauchery. The reality of course was me using the time to clean the ENTIRE house and do a metric ton of laundry.

I did this project, I did that thing, and I put everything back in its proper place in order to create what I would consider the perfect living environment. I succeeded, and yet failed. Everything was just “so,” but it looked like a runner’s up photo entry for Modern Living cover. It looked empty and surprisingly void of color. Like when you take your Christmas decorations down and things seem acutely barren.

I had thoughts like, “Wow, that’s what that chair looks like without a diaper bag and seat cover strewn over it?” And, “Man, the hallway is really dark with Benjamin’s door closed during the day.” I actually pondered a couple of times if this is what it would really be like if I never married and was just a 32 year old schmoe living by himself. At one point in my life this would be the gold standard of living.

But man, it was quiet. I mean qui-et. Too quiet, like the kind of quiet where some dude jumps through your back door with a hatchet. I’ve just grown accustomed to the controlled chaos that is our house with all of Benjamin’s chirps and chatters. This is what I now knew as my gold standard of living, albeit the gold is a little stickier.

All of these thoughts brought me back to a few days earlier when I dropped Emily and Benjamin off at the airport. I took them to security and stayed to watch them pass through and it was so funny seeing tiny little sock-footed Benjamin walking through the metal detector, excited to see all of these new sights. Once they made it through, Emily picked up Benjamin and they both waved one last goodbye and I could hear a faint, “bub-bye dad-da…”

That’s when it hit, I choked up and my eyes instantly glistened. I was going to miss those guys. I’m usually the one leaving for work and you get so busy trying to get to your destination and do your deal or whatever and you never really reflect on the “missing someone part” until maybe that night. But this was instant and would last for 5 days. What seemed like the “coolest” Thanksgiving holiday suddenly felt like it would be the “coldest.”

Feel no pity for me, I made it through just fine but my maturity muscles are still a little sore from being stretched. I don’t want this to turn into an epilogue from “The Wonder Years”, but their absence allowed me to recognize how much I appreciate having them around. If I am the clean black lines on a white piece of paper, they are the colors that fill in the blanks and add vitality to the picture even if it goes outside the lines. Though we weren't together to break bread on Thanksgiving, my family is definitely what I was most thankful for.

P.S. A&M lost the game - boo.

P.P.S.S. Thanksgiving week was without a doubt Schmax's favorite week all year.