Life With Boys

Just realized I never posted my Christmas morning recap …

Maybe the owl hooting outside our bedroom window at 5:30 a.m. should have tipped us off, or maybe the fact that Morgan did not fall asleep until 1:30, but you know me, I have a tendency to misread all the signs of foreboding and go blazing merrily ahead.

As the boys have gotten older and past the sense of wonder that Santa creates we decided to re-introduce a Beck tradition and make the discovery of the “big present” more of a mystery, thus the scavenger hunt was commissioned. My parents sent us on multiple scavenger hunts, used puzzles and even balloons with clues one year – all to make the morning last just a little bit longer. All without incident, what could possibly go wrong?

Let’s rewind about 10 hours …

Matt found a scavenger hunt online (thank you Google). The final clue of that hunt ended under the Christmas tree, but that didn’t work with all of the other bounty, we we decided to stop at the clue before … The stove, or rather the oven.

At first we could not get Morgan’s gift to fit, it was just slightly too large.  Matt made that announcement to the room, we all heard it. Not to be outwitted by the oven I suggested we take out the racks and place the package in diagonally.  Ta da. For extra protection Matt added a bright purple post-it to the controls that said “No.”  All was well and we went to bed to deal with Morgan’s “I cannot sleep” tears of exhaustion. The house finally settled, with Grandma in the guest room and Papa on the couch by the tree keeping watch for Santa and to make sure their dog, Carlie (not sure if this is how it is spelled, I don’t spell the dog’s name very often) did not find anything too good for her consumption.

The house started to stir at about 5:30 (cue the owl and good morning barks from Carlie).  We told the boys they could not come get us until 7 (we are mean that way) and they are not allowed to go downstairs until all are present and accounted for. (Santa leaves a gift in their rooms to courage the “stay where you are” mandate – usually small Legos or puzzles, time passers.) So they make it to almost 7.  Matt goes downstairs, starts a fire and the music (just like my Dad used to do) and takes the purple post-it off the oven because we decided it would be too obvious for our detail oriented boys not to notice. Straight to the tree they fly, but no big present.  What? Did they get tricked? And Matt hands them the first clue.  They are off like a shot, solving the clues in record time.  At this point we were standing in the kitchen, the excitement is mounting and I glance over to the stove clock to see just how fast they are going to get through this.  And it reads 200 degrees, hang on, that is not a time – that is a temperature. “Who turned the oven on?”

Flaming Legos.

The 1,000+ piece set of not in-expensive Legos is sitting directly on the oven heating element.  A perfect line is scorched into the box – and because the box is on a diagonal, all the pieces are sitting directly on the heat.  We yank the gifts out of the oven – the paper is just about to catch in a major way, just add oxygen from the opening of the door. (Tyler’s present is just fine, it was on top of the other.) Matt has the box above the sink, trying to blot the strip with a wet rag and pretend that all is well, as the curls of smoke continue to rise from within.  We tell the boys to continue with the hunt – and they ignore us, standing dumbfounded in the kitchen with everyone else.  (It was a bit like that part in A Christmas Story when the Bumbus hounds destroy the turkey and no one knows quite how to react.) Meanwhile the smoke continues to drift lazily out of the Lego package.  We’ve got to get the package open to see what is still smoldering. So much for the surprise, my father-in-law rips off the paper and opens the box to find the deformed and reeking plastic.  (At which point we are wondering why the fire alarm is not going off just to add to the chaos.)

Morgan is handling this all quite well, for Morgan. I was expecting a melt-down of epic scale.  After all this is the kid who can whip up tears and a Oscar worthy closing argument because he was unfairly asked to do something when it was not his turn. Had the grandparent’s not been there, I’m sure it would have been a whole other story. And since it was Grandma who had turned the oven on …

Turns out my mother-in-law was just preheating it to get the cinnamon rolls going, she heard Matt say that the gifts did not fit, and figured we changed our minds about the oven. Matt had taken the “no” off maybe 60 seconds before she came into the kitchen.

In the end only 6 pieces have been destroyed, but all stink with an odor distinct to melted toys.  To the porch it goes to air out.  (A few hours later Matt gets on the Lego website to order replacement pieces. The tricky part “describe the condition” Matt put “bent, deformed – maybe melted”  – we are waiting on the clarifying call from Lego to explain how this happened.  Matt is SOOOO taking that call.)

And the mood swings back into celebration.  The oven is pre-heated (with the racks reinstalled) and all is well-ish.

We all “ohh” and “ahh” over the thoughtfully chosen gifts (it’s hard to get it wrong when you follow the wish-list suggestions). Then we get to the package from Uncle Scott, Aunt Rachel and B. Scott live in Canada and orders all the gifts from Amazon, gift wrapped and all. Morgan reads the tag “Highly endorsed by B [his cousin]” and inside, a set of Rosie the Riveter paper dolls.  Yeah, not his gift – it is mine. So onto Matt “To help you survive the Zombie Apocalypse, inside the second half of the first season of Outlander – mine again (awesome if you have not seen it by the way) Well it might help me survive, not sure about Matt. So what do I get? A nerf cross-bow, a game called Pandemic and Matt’s radio.  Oh, Amazon, thank you for the comic relief.

In the meantime the cinnamon rolls are cooking away. But what my mother-in-law does a not know is that my oven is a bit wonky (and that was before the introduction European plastic). I always use an air-bake cookie sheet under everything I put in, and never on the bottom. So where do I find the bare-bottomed glass casserole dish? The heat has encouraged all of the brown sugar and cinnamon goodness to create a burnt, hard candy lake around the rolls.  But we will soldier on, who cares that when they cool they are attached to the plate with the adhesive strength of superglue. We still have egg casserole, or will have egg casserole if it EVER FINISHES COOKING! I made it in a smaller pan and did not make as much so I never anticipated it would take twice and long to cook and rise like a soufflé. But that is how the day is going. More than an hour after the cinnamon rolls of steel we sat down for eggs that were still not quite right, but we’re tough and no one is going to complain, out loud anyway.

A few hours went by and things settled down, for a minute.  Mike took Carlie (their dog) out and the cats came down to investigate. Not knowing the cats had made a reappearance Mike let Carlie loose – and away flew the cats, Hermes made the escape directly up the stairs ,but Zeus was not as wise.  Zeus tore over to the side of the room, directly opposite the door and straight into the Christmas tree.  The tree remained upright, somehow only swaying to a non-perilous degree. Multiple ornaments crashed to the ground. In the meantime I tried to “save” him and he was having none of it … I have the scratches to prove it.

And it just went on from there.