Christmas Cards

 Late last week I made a social media post about our updated address. There is back story to this year’s Christmas card. 

On Thanksgiving, upon arrival at Mimi and Poppy’s house I tried to quickly get my whole family to stand normal in front of the Christmas tree and take a picture. Normal = impossible for my family. 

It did not end well, and the final blow to the photo shoot was when I exclaimed at the end “I just wanted a normal photo, with everyone smiling and wearing clean clothes!” Stellar job, mom. I’m aware. 

The next day the Black Friday offer I knew was coming (hence the picture situation the day before) showed up in my inbox. The day was crazy though so it was evening before I was scrambling to put together a Christmas card. I had since apologized to my kids for the photo fiasco, and decided that I did not want that not-shining moment saved for the sake of posterity on all the walls of our friends and family. So I picked a different photo, one more similar to the “stock-image” my teenager was seeking to avoid. This caused one child to meltdown in utter disgust that I had tortured them the day before only to not even use the picture in question. I talked this child off their ledge of unjustness and moved on to writing the novel that would grace the back. 

Finished it, read it to Aaron to make sure it made sense, ordered the 75 I was sure I would not need (50 to mail out 25 to save forever) and finally, pressed order. 

With that, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then it dawned on me; I never entered my Black Friday code. The whole reason for the whole thing was the Black Friday code. 

As I lay in bed that night, I realized that I wrote on the back that one of my children was in 2nd grade. He’s not. He is in 3rd grade, I’m his teacher.

So, when you receive our Christmas card this year, you can know with certainty that that picture was taken when we were all in a good mood because nobody said “This is the picture for the Christmas card this year.”  Laugh well, my friends, and laugh often. 

If I could figure out how, I would add the picture we are NOT using on our Christmas card.