Lindsey Wood, Destroyer of Christmas

Yup. Our wonderful angel (and by "angel" I mean "small terrorist") ruined Christmas. How did a four-year-old manage such a feat? Well, I'll tell you.

For us, Christmas was going to be split into two parts. Because we fly out on the morning of the 22nd, and because we obviously can't take everything with us to the States, we were going to have part of Christmas here on the 20th and then have the rest with our families in the States on Christmas day. Stace wrapped up a bunch of presents and put them under the tree. (Side note: Yes, it's the same fake tree we've had for about ten years with the pre-strung malfunctioning lights. We vowed to get rid of it after last Christmas, but then when this whole Switzerland thing popped up, we decided to bring it with us rather than finding a new tree over here. It will not be making the return journey to U.S. soil.)

Anyway, Lindsey and Tanner had been longingly eyeing the presents under the tree, but they had done a reasonably good job of exercising self-restraint and not discovering "accidental" rips in the wrapping paper and other such inexplicable phenomena that have occurred in our family in the past. On Tuesday, Stace left the kids alone for a little while so she could go run a couple of errands. (Don't worry; we don't leave them alone for the weekend or anything like that.) A while after Stace left, Tanner called her to report that something horrible had happend: Lindsey had opened three of the presents. That's right, our little angel (and by "angel," I mean "evil spirit in corporeal form") took it upon herself to start ripping into the presents. She opened two of Tanner's and one of her own.

Now, every parent knows that there's an absolutely stupid question to ask a four-year-old, but we all ask it anyway: "Why did you do that?!??!?" We all hope against hope for a well-reasoned, carefully-constructed answer so that we can then point out the logical flaws in the four-year-old's thought process. Of course, what we all get instead boils down to something like, "Uhhh, ummmm, hmmmmm . . . I don't know."

So, the bottom line is that Tanner got to play with his toys early, Lindsey doesn't get to play with her toy early, we made Lindsey apologize to everyone in Switzerland for ruining Christmas, Lindsey didn't get to watch movies for two days, and our two-part Christmas has now become a three-part Christmas.

Four days until the trip . . . .