I was driving down the road the other day and the song, “Holiday Road,  began to play. That song brings back the memories and the many laughs of the Clark Griswold movies.  One of our family favorites, has to be National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.  I think that we can all recite lines from this movie, it is a classic. I began to think about all of the misadventures the Griswold family encountered throughout the movie and I giggled in the car as the song was finishing up.

My sequence of thinking then moved onto our own unique holiday mishaps and adventures. I guess we all have them, maybe not to the extreme as the movie played out. I hope that your upcoming holiday season is uneventful and blessed. Enjoy our holiday mishaps and adventures!!!! These are some of my favorite and most memorable….

Thanksgiving: In 2018, we had planned a trip to my parents for Thanksgiving. Everyone was excited about going- including my grandparents… my bags were all packed up and ready to go… as I went to bed that night, I experienced the worst pain I ever had in my entire life! It was a kidney stone:(    To say the least, the trip didn’t happen the next day. I ended up not being able to pass the kidney stone, it was lodged in my right kidney- it had to be surgically removed after the holiday passed.

Holiday turkey leftovers are always a challenge. What do you do with all those leftovers in your refrigerator in order to make them “fresh” again for your family? My mom had asked me to make a turkey casserole with our leftover turkey a few years back. I had whipped it out quickly using the same formula as the chicken casserole that our family loves. I placed the turkey casserole into a Pyrex glass baking dish. Boom, it would be done in time with all of the other leftover veggies, etc. We were all laughing, talking, working away in mom’s kitchen. I pulled the casserole out of the oven and began to let it cool before we ate. All of the sudden, the entire dish popped, glass was flying all over the kitchen. Lucky for all of us, no one was hurt. No turkey casserole for dinner- I think we all ate a ham sandwich.

Christmas:

Richard and I were so excited the first Christmas that we were homeowners. We had a beautiful older home with high ceilings. This would be the year that we were going to a choose and cut Christmas tree farm to purchase our tree. Normally, we just purchased a tree from a local spot in town in years past. The Christmas Tree Farm had simply beautiful trees!!! We selected a tree that believed to be around 10 feet high. Once the tree arrived at our house, the realization had begun to set in… our tree was 12/13 feet tall. How were we going to get it in the house??? We knew it would fit inside our home, but getting it upright and inside???? Richard ended up bracing the top limbs for safety reasons and securing it with fishing line, so it would not tip over.

As a young married couple, we had lights, ornaments, but not nearly enough!!! We hit Kmart hard- yep, we are that old folks… we had a Kmart. I still have some of those ornaments that we purchased almost 25 Christmases ago from Kmart in order to fill up our first gigantic Christmas tree. I smile each year those ornaments come out of the box and think of that first Christmas.  All of our beautiful Christmas cards went on our giant tree that year in order to fill in the gaps. Clark Griswold would have loved it, especially when Richard used the chainsaw to get it out of the house!!!!

Mom always wrapped our presents and sometimes did not put a name on them so that we ( my sister and myself) would not sneak into them before Christmas Day. She knew who was supposed to get which present. Isn’t that such a mom thing to know!!! Well, one year we went to our grandparents house for our yearly Christmas Eve dinner. Mom had the presents all ready for each person that night. When Granny opened up her gift, she opened up a pair of mens pants, those were supposed to be for my dad to open up on Christmas Day. Mom was a bit sheepish about the whole thing of course, but she had two snoopy little girls who loved to have hints of what was to come for Christmas Day.  So, Christmas morning came, Dad opened up Granny’s present and they did a switch around gift…. Later on that day when dad was getting rid of boxes and taking them out to the wood stove,  my sister was searching for one of her gifts, but it was already too late… it was in the stove… of course, it was replaced, but mishaps happen.

Happy Holidays to all!