Dear Santa...

I distinctly remember looking out my window one Christmas Eve and convincing myself I saw a red light shooting across the sky. Rudolph, obviously.  

As can be seen in the photo above, my visits to Santa were all business. He spoiled me. And I loved it. So this Christmas, in honor of the jolly old man in red, I'm recounting my top 10 Christmas gifts. Thanks for the good times, Saint Nick. And thanks to Ricky and Patti Long, my favorite elves who helped out.

10. Portable DVD player

I was absolutely useless the Christmas that I got this electronic device. I sat in that red chair and watched the two DVDs I owned (Legally Blonde and Miss Congeniality) all day. Shameful confession: I never read the instructions and thought the DVD player always had to be plugged into an outlet. Two years later I discovered a battery in the original box. It broke a few months later. Whoops.


9. The Blind Guy

If you aren't familiar with the Blind Guy's background story, check this post. For those of you who are familiar, here are the photos to prove my fascination with this man and his entertaining facial expressions. Thank you, Ricky, for giving me a framed pic to forever immortalize the 2000 election and the celebrity it created.


8. Beanie Babies

PURE JOY. That's what I felt every time I opened a new beanie. I got the Princess Diana bear (a rare collector's beanie, hence the plastic display box) for my birthday one year and thought I was SUCH a big deal. Where is the bear now? I have no idea. I would hope somewhere buried in the giant box of beanies I unearthed last week. But man, that purple bag of beans was practically pure gold way back when.

7. The Josh Tape

Oh the Josh tape. I had everything from SNL hosting gigs to appearances on Letterman to 30-second stories on Entertainment Tonight to 2-second glimpses on red carpet specials. All focused on the love of my tween years: Josh Hartnett. And then...the unthinkable...I LOST THE JOSH TAPE. I had feebly given up after months and months (possibly years?) of searching. Luckily my mom found the tape right around Christmas and decided to wrap it up as a gift. As you can see, I was elated to have the Josh tape back in my possession. And yes, for those of you who are wondering, the Josh tape still lives on today.

Also, while we're on the Josh topic, I have to share something that I found while I was looking through some old pictures. It's shameful, and I don't blame you for judging.

This is the trunk I packed in every year for summer camp. Apparently I just couldn't leave anything untouched by Josh mania. Yep, even my summer camp was aware of my Josh Hartnett obsession. What I love most about this embarrassing example of my middle-aged years is that I thought this piece of artistry was so beautiful that it warranted photo documentation. Reason #340598709345 that a good chunk of the people I met during middle school will always remember me as the girl who was obsessed with Josh Hartnett.

6. iPod

 This was back before iPods had become microscopic. For my first ever iPod, Santa brought me an old school mini (which was new school at the time). My light blue mini is now about 10x the size and weight of what Apple is currently marketing as the latest in iPod technology. However, this antique is still truckin' along! It has now been promoted to the position of my official "Christmas iPod" and holds all 362 of my Christmas songs. It's my top music source October through December!

5. Moon Shoes

Unfortunately for me and for you, I can't find a picture of me in my moon shoes. I'm pretty sure I looked just as skilled and awesome as this girl whenever I put those things on, though. For those of you who have never experienced the magic of moon shoes, allow me to explain. Basically you strap these bad boys on your feet and have an experience as close to walking on the moon as you'll ever get (unless you decide to go walk on the actual moon, which I would guess is pretty unlikely). Magical. This form of entertainment could usually only last about three minutes, but it was a GREAT three minutes.


4. The Mini Pool Table

I think this gift was originally intended only for my brother Stephen, but all three of the Long kids claimed it. Not a fan of pool? Not a problem. You could convert this gaming mecca into a ping pong table or or an air hockey table (minus the actual air part). Hours of entertainment. Our oober cool Uncle Jeff (the only of my mom's three brothers who was still single at this time and came to spend Christmas with us every year until he met his darling wife) even took the time to give us all lessons on the basics of pool strategy. What a guy! Unfortunately I think my initial learning of pool in mini-form stunted the maturing of my pool skills seeing as how I'm a completely miserable pool player in the full-sized pool table world.

3. Pogo Stick

I may not look happy in this pic, but it's just because I'm in the zone. The pogo zone, that is. Patti Long disagrees with me, but I'm pretty sure I once pogoed up to 500 times. We're talking 30+ minutes of consistent pogo. I was the pogo master. This year I tried to revive my pogo skills when I borrowed a family friend's pogo stick. I jumped three(ish) times then fell into a chair. Apparently I am the pogo master no more.


2. Jack Rabbit

My sister got her feelings hurt this particular Christmas morning because she thought Jack Rabbit belonged to all of us. No ma'am! He was all MINE! I was the cool kid who took her rabbit on walks. Jack had his own leash (sorry I don't have any photo documentation of that; it looked as ridiculous as you're thinking) that he would usually put up with until we made it to my next door neighbor's yard. As soon as we passed the boundary into their grass, he would start jumping spastically all over the place until I took him back home. Despite this fact, I kept trying to "walk" my rabbit. And I was completely oblivious of how ridiculous I looked. As I grew older I had less time to care for my little bunny. Since he wasn't getting the attention he deserved, I gave him away to a 3rd grade classroom. As far as I'm concerned, Jack is still alive. That's the best thing about my rabbit: he's an immortal like Zeus or Hercules. Long live Jack the rabbit!!!


1. SNOW

White Christmases aren't the norm in Tulsa, OK but when they do happen they're absolutely fab-u-lous.

I must take a moment to recount The Great Christmas Snow of 2009. It was a great snow, but it was A LOT of snow. My stubborn sister (gotta lover her!) insisted that she was going to church with or without the rest of the family even though a snow storm was supposed to hit while we were in church. So we all went, but we were NOT happy about it. The candlelight service, as always, was lovely. It was so lovely that the other four members of the Long family (keeping the Christmas spirit alive) forgot how mad/frustrated/annoyed we were with Carolyn for dragging us there. We pleasantly chatted after church for a bit until my brother came running up to inform everyone that we needed to leave. NOW. I walked outside and was greeted by a BLIZZARD. A blizzard by my Tulsan standards, at least. There was not a single flake on the ground when we went into church, and when we came out of church there was not a speck of ground without a flake.

Our car was in covered parking, but there was still snow everywhere. The boys removed said snow and we booked it out of the parking lot before things could get worse. We were doomed right from the start. Two minutes into the drive, the boys had to get out and dust the snow off the car again. Why couldn't the windshield wipers do that? Because the windshield wipers kept freezing. Excellent. The first  road we tried to take was already closed so we turned around and  tried another. The boys continued to get out of the car every few minutes to whack the ice off the windshield wipers and de-snow the car as we slowly made our way to road #2. Our cheerful Christmas moods quickly turned sour. We all coped with this in different ways. I berated Carolyn and blamed our turmoil on her. My brother and dad were silent (mostly due to the fact that they were rarely actually inside the car, so they didn't have many opportunities to yell). My mom yelled at me for yelling at Carolyn. Just one big happy family!

We finally made it to road #2. There was a hill we had to go up. It was a BIG hill. And there were already at least five other cars stuck on said hill in front of us. We went up a distance. Got stuck. Helped the lady in front of us who was stuck. She got stuck again. We got stuck again. My dad starting brainstorming hotels we could stay at that were close and then suggested that we walk four miles home (the women in the car quickly shot this option down). Our Christmas spirits drained, we decided it was every man for himself and pushed our car past the woman we had been helping. Somehow our Toyota Camry was the first car to make it to the top of the hill (yes, ahead of all the four-wheel drive vehicles). There was a brief moment when we all cheered and yelled to celebrate our accomplishment. Then eight sets of headlights come into focus in front of us. We had failed to realize that on the other side of the hill, there were most likely other cars trying to make it to the hill's peak. There are normally only four lanes on this road, but on this snowy night the cars on the other side of the hill had decided to make eight lanes. Leaving our lane options at...zero. I don't really remember how we got home. I just remember that we were all really quiet and tense. And that we were in the car for a very long time.  An hour and a half after we left church (it usually takes us 15 minutes to get there), we FINALLY made it home. And then, of course, the car got stuck in the driveway. Needless to say, snow was much more fun on Christmas morning than on Christmas Eve night in 2009.

One last honorable mention:
This Christmas I only asked for two things: a plane ticket to New York City and new tights. I figured the tights were a sure thing, but the plane ticket was a little less sure. I burst into tears when my favorite elf, Ricky, presented me with a map of the U.S. that had arrows pointing from Fort Worth to NYC and an attached flight itinerary. Jackpot! Santa continues to spoil me even when I'm on the cusp of adulthood!

To close this post, I'd like to direct your attention to this precious photo of my family putting up the Christmas tree. Really, my favorite thing about Christmas isn't the presents (no offense, Santa). It's hanging out with these weirdies. Cliche? Yes. Still true? Absolutely.

Wishing you the merriest of Christmases spent enjoying the loot Santa brought you with the people you love!