Christmas, According to Finley

Long ago, Grandma Brenda gave us the coolest Advent Calendar where, instead of chocolates behind each little door, every day has a little book you read and then hang on the tree instead.  Every year, even before Finley could understand, Finley and I have read her story and hung it on the tree as part of our Christmas bedtime routine.  In the chaos of the last week, we had gotten a little behind so we had a few to read the other night.  One of the stories was about the Wise Men and she, of course, was very excited since she gets to be a Wise Man in her Christmas pageant at church.  The next one was about the Romans.  She asked if it was about Shane Rohman, which was funny enough, but then she said, "Mom, you know that night when Shane Rohman and Josh - not Daddy's Josh but that other Josh (Sjogren) - were here?  I saw a cigarette on the patio when they left.  And I know it wasn't Daddy because he doesn't smoke (insert guffaw), and it wasn't Josh's so I think it was Shane Rohman's."  I said, "Well, how do you know it wasn't Josh's?"  To which Finley replied, "Because I always see, like, teenagers and people smoking outside and Josh doesn't look like them.  Shane looks like those people who smoke.  I mean, I know he's not a teenager, but he just looks like them."  As if that wasn't enough, we continued to read some more books - we were VERY behind - and we read about King Herod.  Again, because Herod is a big part of their church program, Finley got very excited.  She said, "HEROD!  I know Herod!  But what does King Herod look like?"  I said I didn't know but we could look it up.  She said, "Well I know who Herod is.  He's Mike.  And he's really nice."  Clearly, Mike is the guy who plays Herod in the pageant so I tried to explain that Mike is not really Herod and that might not be what Herod looked like.  After a couple of confused interactions and me, again, telling her we could look it up, Finley said, "No, I'll just ask Barb."  Barb is the choir director at church who runs the Christmas program and of course, she is the be-all and end-all of Christmas knowledge :)


On a secular note, about a week ago, I wrapped all the presents I had bought for everyone in the family.  Against my better judgement, I just HAD to put them under the tree and I even felt the need to put some small ones in the stockings because my OCD personality just couldn't bear the thought of them being wrapped and sitting in hiding until Christmas Day.  Pretty much right away, Finley noticed that there was a present under the tree to Cam, from Santa.  It didn't take her long to ask enough questions where I admitted the present was from me, but that I wanted to trick Daddy and make him think Santa had given him a present.  I thought I was in the clear with the stockings because you literally could not tell they were in there; however, tonight, Finley decided she wanted to go through the stockings and make sure she knew which stocking belonged to each of us.  Of course, she found a couple of presents in them.  She pulled the presents out, incredulously, and declared that Santa had left some presents in the socks.  I quickly said that Santa must have come early so he could get a head-start and not have to work so hard on Christmas Eve and Cam chimed in that he probably knew we weren't going to be home for Christmas so he maybe tried to drop some off early.  At first, she seemed to buy this.  After about 10 minutes, Finley whispered in my ear, "Mom, did you put those presents in there? "  I tried to play it cool and I said, "Why would you think that?"  She said, "Because I know you tried to trick Daddy and that writing looks like yours."  I thought I did a great job of disguising my handwriting, but I guess I'm going to have to work a LOT harder to pull this Christmas thing off!!!