Christmas Surprises

Christmas was wonderful.  Singing Christmas songs continually brought tears to my eyes and I enjoyed a wonderful spirit the entire season (blame it on the hormones, but in this case, they were nice tears).  But I'm not going to bore you with all the spiritual stuff because I want to tell you about a couple of the super great presents we got!!!  I'm shallow like that.

Some weeks ago, my Mom and Craig got to talking and decided to get my blog posts all bound up in a book for me.  It was a perfect project for the two of them: Craig did all the work, and my Mom paid for it all and they were both very happy.  Unfortunately, when the finished product came, I saw that we had a box addressed to Craig with no indication of who it was from, and figured it was probably a present FOR Craig and opened it up, intending to wrap it for him and put it under the tree.  In my defense, I told this plan to Craig and he agreed it was a good idea, so it's not like I was being devious or anything.  If Craig would have looked more closely at the box, he would have seen the return address and realized what it was and stopped me.  But he didn't.  And I ended up opening my big surprise about 6 days before Christmas.

Craig was so unhappy!  He'd worked so hard and was so sad that my big surprise was ruined.  The second I had the box opened, he realized his mistake and snatched it out of my hands.  He wouldn't tell me anything about it and hid it away, threatening that I would never see it again.  He had a few days to stew over it all, so that was when he came up with his revenge. He was bound and determined to surprise me one way or another!

He was sneaky about it, too.  He put a present under the tree with this adorable tag:

To: Alanna
From:
Director, Patrice Bentley
Executive Producer, Rex Bentley
Artistic Direction, Craig Smith
 and
Award Winning Author, Alanna Smith

But inside, rather than my blog book, was some book about spies (this was not a coincidence, Craig pointed out) along with a sonnet he'd written (I love sonnets, and he'd put it in iambic pentameter and everything!) about how because I'd ruined my surprise by peaking, I would have to work to get my book.  Then it suggested that I check out the filing cabinet drawers. 

In the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, I found a present, but this one was way too small to be my book.  As I unwrapped it, I quickly discovered that it had been wrapped several times.  Actually, probably at least twenty times.  Most of those layers were done with wrapping paper, but occasionally he'd gotten creative and used yarn, A/C unit tape, cloth & safety pins, and even a plastic bag.  It took me forever to finally get down to the folded up note which contained my next clue: this time I had to go to the crawl space.

Inside the crawl space was a huge box.  Which contained a smaller box.  And then several more smaller boxes (I think 5 or 6, all told).  And then another 20 or so layers of wrapping.  It took me so long to unwrap all these that I had to go to the bathroom before I was done!  The next clue was a bit more obtuse: it informed me that my present was NOT in Craig's car.  I wasn't sure what do with that information.  I tried looking in my car, and got nothing.  So I opened up the trunk of Craig's car and found a present with the words, "This is not your book.  Surprise!"

Upon opening this gift (only one layer of wrapping paper), I discovered a framed portrait from our wedding!  We'd been talking about getting one ever since the big day seven-and-a-half years ago and just never gotten around to it, so this made me burst into happy tears.  What a lovely thing to finally own!  There was also a note that told me to look in Craig's dresser, which was where my book was hiding.

So I ended up being surprised after all.  AND I have a big fat book of all my blog posts from 2011 and 2012.  This probably makes me the biggest narcissist in the world, but I really do enjoy reading my old blog posts, so I'm excited to have them in a more tangible format.  Just those two years took up 300 pages, so I guess that even after five years of blogging, I still have a lot to say!  And Craig promises that we can get the other years published some other day.  (Birthday present for me, Mom?)

So those were my two big presents.  We also got an awesome TV finally (flat-screen, HD, all that stuff)-- we'd never actually bought a TV, but had been on our 5th free one, so this was a big deal for us.  (Lots of thanks to my wonderful in-laws for their generosity!!!)  But this was definitely more of a present for Craig, the film snob, than for me, who is still quite happy watching movies on VHS. 

In any case, we were both very happy with our Christmas presents.

And now, I can start deleting pictures off the blog posts and making room for new ones!  So if you want to take one last look at all the pictures from 2011 and 2012 (but honestly, you probably don't), get cracking because they're disappearing soon!  And be prepared for an onslaught of new pictures!!!