I shoulda been a crook. You're gonna like this one.

What is it with when you're tip toeing around in an area where a baby is snoozing peacefully and you enter said room so stealthily and with much confidence that you can go unnoticed and then you end up making 100 times more noise than you ever would have if you weren't consciously trying to be quiet? Jason is the worst, I'll call him out right now. He always stubs his toe really hard on something, then subsequently trips onto the bed while simultaneously flinging the glass of water he was holding across the room. Upon landing he immediately shoves his face forcefully into a pillow in order to muffle his scream of pain. Which doesn't do too much muffling, does it? Or the fact that he is the loudest sneezer in the world, like when we were first married I would literally yell and punch something out of sheer startle every time he would sneeze, because it was just so disturbingly loud. Now it seems whenever he walks into where our babe is slumbering, an attack of sneezes immediately seize him, and again, he flings himself onto the bed going for the pillow, but alas, a cry usually follows shortly after because those sneezes cannot be domesticated. I'll admit, I'm not much better. I think something about him being just a bigger person in general adds to his overall need to make noise, but it happens to me too. Knocking something off the dresser or hitting that stupid door stopper thing with my foot that makes that ridiculous boiiiiiiiing sound that reverberates off each and every surface and then the inevitable whisper-swearing that follows.

This brings to mind a story I've been meaning to share for some time. Something you've never heard before. It's an oldie but goodie. I'm going to tell you the story of the little Drummer boy. Just kidding. No, no folks, this story is mine... all mine, as in, it belongs to me, as in don't try to re-tell it the next time you're at a holiday party as if it happened to you. Because it hasn't' happened to that many people.

And by oldie I mean it happened to be about 10 years ago. Maybe. I can't remember if it happened to my my senior year in high school or first few years of college. But how relevant is that detail to the story? Not very. If someone were to interrupt me while telling this story in order to correct that kind of detail, I'd have to probably sucker punch them.

When I was on my way home from running some errands my mother had asked me to stop by my Aunt Dallas' house and drop something off. I can't remember what it was (I do remember some things about the story so stop getting impatient), but we'll say it was a Christmas treat. I knew the location of my great Aunt Dallas' home very well, it was only a couple blocks away from my Grandmother's house, the house where my dad grew up in good 'ol Idaho Falls.

So I pull up in front of the house. I can't see any lights on, but assume she's expecting me because my mom had called her. I knock. Nothing. I knock again and ring the doorbell. Nothing again. So I do what any respectable great-niece would do. I enter.

The reason I hadn't seen any lights on from outside was because... there weren't any lights on in the house. So I clumsily fumble my way into the kitchen and flip on a switch, but still no sign of anyone. I yell her name, "Aunt Dallas?!" And think she for sure should be able to hear me. But nothing. So I continue my search. Going into each and every room upstairs and yelling her name all the while throughout the house. Then I hear a little something downstairs and decide I better go on down.

I get downstairs and as I round the corner from the stairs, horror strikes me. There are people there. A family in fact, sitting on a large sectional couch watching a movie. The family room downstairs is dimly lit but there's enough light for me to be sure of one thing and one thing only: No Aunt Dallas. The 10 year old turns and looks at me, and the rest of the family members follow, and pretty soon, we're all having a big staring contest, the mom, the dad, the 3 kids, all staring at me and me at them. And then I say again, as if with my words will change everything and all will be right, "Aunt Dallas?"

As it turns out, my Aunt Dallas had moved across town. And I had not a single idea that this had taken place. And, I'm sure you can gather that I had just walked into and rooted around in the rooms of the house of total strangers. It was like the scene on Back to the Future when he goes back to his old house and the windows are all barred up and then he sneaks in that room and that black family is living there? Pretty much exactly what it was like.

At that point, I didn't know what to do, so I put my hand in my coat pocket and pretended it was a gun, and told them to, "give me all your money!!" And that's how we had such a grand collection of Christmas loot that year. No, that didn't happen, but we all did have a good laugh about it. They were very kind and understanding, considering how alarming it must have been having the silhouette of a total stranger suddenly appear in your hallway when you're enjoying movie night with your family. They invited me to their popcorn so I grabbed a blanket, sat down and watched the rest of Parent Trap with them. Then we spent the night reenacting that classic Let's get together scene from the show. That didn't happen either, but I wish it would have. Miss you, family.

So I guess this all relates together because when I'm trying to be stealth, I can't be. On the other hand, I can walk right in the front door of a total strangers' house and yell around, trip over objects, flip lights on and off and remain completely undetected. You wish you had my gift.

Hope you're all as excited as I am about Christmas. I'm giddy as a school girl!! Only 8 days left and counting.