Holiday Reloaded

I won't bore you with a "What I did for my Christmas Vacation" blog. I'll just give you the highlights. But before I do, I want to hit a couple of things that are more serious than my normal blog fodder.

First, please keep a relative of mine in your thoughts and prayers. Not everyone likes to be blogged about, so I'll just say this relative had a medical emergency a couple days before Christmas and is still in the hospital. She will be there or a rehabilitation facility indefinitely.

She's a wonderful person and the mother of four. She's served in a war (as if that's harder than being a mother of four). She's always there for you, no matter waht. She's been there for me when I certainly didnt' deserve it. She drove many hours to come take care of me and my family (TWICE!) when I was unable to; she sent care packages when I was pregnant (we'll all agree - that's a lot of care packages!); brought gifts when she visited; provided hand-me downs when they were needed. But most of all, she shares my same sarcastic sense of humo, and also being the mother of a large brood, she understands how it is. I miss her right now, but I know she will pull out of this. Her amazing family, husband and incredible kids are there for her.

My second bit of serious also involved an extended family member. I just want people to remember, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. And rememer that what you perceive to be reality may indeed not be the same to everyone involved. There are other perspectives. I think we all live our lives trying to help others. That was the impression I was under, anyway.

Okay,let's get on with it:

Finding Kyle in the Space Needle is Like Finding a Needle in a Haystack

I've gone twelve years without losing a kid. Which means I was due, right?

Since we consider ourselves Washington state natives, the fact that we'd never taken our children to the Seattle Space Needle wasn't something we thought about. But then the oldest complained and so we packed ourselves, a grandmother, an aunt and uncle and four cousins into a couple of cars and headed north.

The Needle was excellent fun, except as I get older, I get more paranoid about totally stupid things. Like when the two oldest boys pointed out that Fifi was small enough to fit through the wires on the viewing platform. To which I then envisioned terrible things happening for the rest of our stay and hung closely to the walls of the Needle or just went inside to put myself out of my misery.

This prompted my boy children to ask if I ever relax.

Kid: "Do you worry all the time?"

Me: "Totally."

Kid: "What about when we are riding our scooters?"

Me: "I worry you'll get hit by a truck."

Kid: "Swimming?"

Me: "You'll knock your head on the side and drown."

Kid: "Shopping?"

Me: "Someone will steal you when I'm not looking."

Kid: "Riding in the car?"

Me: "You'll be eating a jolly rancher, choke, and I won't hear you hitting the back of the seat for help because I have the stereo up too loud."

See? ARGH! I drive myself crazy.

So, I was feeling pretty jolly what with the 'frost your own rocket cookies' for the kiddies activity (Space Needle - it's a theme.) and the picture with Santa in his rocket ship (theme, ya'll) We were down in the gift shop trying on hats and silly sunglasses. We were milling outside the the gift shop. We were milling on the way to the parking lot. We were milling in the parking lot. The kids did a massive Chinese fire drill, ending up in cars, and we hit the road.

As we were turning out of the parking lot, hubby (ever the more intelligent of our partnership) turns to me and says, "Kyle is in the other car, right?" To which I say, still feeling that 'I-am-totally-relaxed-and-not-freaking-out-about-anything" holiday glow, "Yep, I think so."

Hubby calls the other car. Kyle is not there. I don't think I waited for the car to stop before I high tailed it back to the big Needle. Then, the awful moment when you have to decide which fork in the road to take - Needle or parking lot, Needle or parking lot, Needle or parking lot - when did we lose the kid? Every orange coat I see I sprint towards, every call of "mom" I turn and stare,...

I turn into the bottom of the Space Needle and have almost made my way around when I spot said lost child leaning against a pole with a small posse of armed security guards. Thank goodness he was smart in his thinking and went DIRECTLY to a security guard to tell them he was lost. As we were leaving there were lots of guards, cashiers, janitors, etc,.. telling us they were so happy he found me, and yes, thinking, "Boy, what a slacker mom."

Don't miss the next installment of 'What I did on my Christmas Holdiday' - Scrabble with Elementary school boys, or, did you know there are 20 different ways to spell poop?