Saved By the Elves

It's quiet.  There's no one around aside from me, the sleeping Darling wieners, the laptop, and the coffee.

Ahh...

I deemed Saturday tree gettin' up day and I know how much the Dracenator normally likes to help so I kinda counted on him being right there in the middle of it.  

Then he comes to me Saturday morning and wants to know if he and Devin can go to Popaw's in order to rake leaves. 

Huh?  

Popaw seems to have a way of motivating those two to actually get excited about doing things at his house that they view as unjust punishment at home. I think it has something to do with the fact that their older cousin is involved. Or it could have something everything to do with the fact that he rewards their efforts with cold hard cash.

So anyway, Dray runs to me and asks if he can go over there and rake leaves and I say to him, "Yes, but I'm going to put up the Christmas tree".  I am pretty certain that I did not stutter and that I spoke at a normal volume.  

He didn't seem to be bothered by this fact at all.  He was, come hell or high water, not gonna be missin' out on any leaf rakin' party at the popaw's. 

So off they went.  And we put up the tree, complete with all the trimmings.  I even felt a little weird and a teensy sad that the boys weren't there fighting over who was gonna hang what ornament where and even said once how surprised I was that Dray didn't care that we were putting up the tree without him.

Momaw Pat called at one point and asked if they could take them to the town Christmas parade so I felt better knowing they weren't missing out on that at least. I have a slight aversion to parades myself that I think has something to do with the fact that I marched in just about every one to ever come through the southeast back when I was a band geek and a flag girl. 

But that's another subject entirely.  Back to the moment when the demolition duo returned home Saturday evening. 

I had expected a little excitement from Dray when he saw the beautiful sparkly tree but instead I look over to see him standing against the wall with his lip stuck out, working on mustering up some crocodile tears while he bellows out,

"YOU PUT UP THE TREE WITHOUT ME??!!"  WHY??!!? WHY? WHY?!!!"

Yeah. Let's just say this one won't go down as one of my most cherished parenting moments.  I felt like the heel on a piece of burnt toast. 

I kept saying, "I TOLD you!"  over and over.  And Charlie kept saying, "Dracen, she TOLD you!  I was standing right there and you said, Okay!"   It eventually got a little ugly because he was not letting this one go.  He even went so far as to demand that Charlie take that tree down so we could re-decorate it. 

Well, that didn't happen.  He finally snapped out of it and helped me put the skirt around the tree and hung his new sock monkey ornament I saved for him to hang.  Once he agreed to my bribe offer to rearrange the elves around the house, I knew we were all good again.

He came to me last night while I had my nose all up in this laptop surfing for Cyber Monday deals to kick off my Christmas shopping, flung a hunk of orange cheddar in a baggie in front of my screen and wanted to know what was up with THAT!  

Um, THAT needed to hit the trash can because it was covered in a big ol' moldy wig of fuzz.  He marched off to throw it away and then turned and wanted to know if I had any "clean" cheese. 

BwaHa! 

After he had his snack of clean cheese, brushed his teeth and climbed into bed, I went in to tuck him in.  He likes to draw out bedtime as long as humanly possible so he almost always conjures up a random question or two for me before I walk out of the room. 

Last night it went like this...

Mom?

"What Dracen?"

Do you like Justin Bieber?

"Umm...can't really say that I'm a fan, no."

I HATE Justin Bieber!

"Okay, Dracen.  Good night". 

Sigh.  Poor Justin.  Not sure what he did to get on the bad side of the Dracenator.  Maybe he should do a Christmas special complete with elves.  

Because I now know that

elves?

Make everything better.  :)