Life is a dot to dot.

December 17, 2009

Waaaaaaah!!!

ALL I WANTED WAS A CHRISTMAS PHOTO!!

#1. I wanted the whole family in it.

#2. I wanted everyone to look halfway decent.

#3. I wanted everyone to smile.

That is all I wanted.

But what I got??

What I got was...

an Ellison version of the third world war.

That's all.

Hello?? Preston?? I don't know where you think the camera is.

That's ok.
We'll just try again.

Hmmmmm. Hannah would be a waitress if you slipped a towel over her arm.

And Abbi? She's a little distracted by the party taking place to the right of us.

One more time.

Yoooo-hoooooo....Hannah.

Over here.

All six of us, looking in the same direction & smiling for one measly

photograph...yes! actually! It IS too much to hope for!!!

And I can accept that.
I am a realist. We tried. We failed. I can move on in life.

The fourteen-year-old daughter? Not so much.

I just didn't realize how important the annual Christmas picture is to my Hannah.

Until today.

Upon returning home from school, she noticed that we had decided to use a family photo taken earlier this year while we were in NYC as our Christmas card picture.

We tried to get the right shot in November (above pics) but we had a rough time that day!!

Usually, we get a snapshot of the kids in front of the tree...which is what Hannah assumed we would do. Only we hadn't done that yet.

Sooooo, Randy suggested that we keep things simple and use the NYC family pic, I agreed, and that was the plan.

Randy & I had printed and trimmed the pics and sealed up over half of our Christmas cards when Miss Hannah announced that there was NO POSSIBLE WAY that picture was going to be mailed out to the entire world!!!!!!!!!!!!

To which we responded, "Uh. Oh yes. It is." and continued about our business. Since when is it necessary to consult the children about our Christmas picture choice when they make the entire process of getting one a nightmare to begin with????

People.

I am still confused about what happened next.

It's a blur.

I have never seen anyone FREAK OUT to this extent over an unflattering photograph...that wasn't even unflattering!!!

Tears. Screaming. Panic attack. Accusations. We hate her. We are trying to destroy her. We are horrible, evil, demented human beings.

I am not exaggerating.

I totally tried to put her in her place but she was so distraught that it was quite amusing and I honestly could not even keep a straight face...errr....uhh...

an angry face.

As the scene continued to play out,

it became down right hilarious.

I wish you could have been a fly on the wall.

Free entertainment.

Twilight Zone. doo-DOO-doo-DOO-doo-DOO-doo

Bailor jumped in with his two cents.

Preston & Abbi were right behind him.

Randy, poor thing, he is a lover NOT a fighter. He was in shock.

He can barely handle my drama, let alone teenage girl drama.

Let me just tell you. It got ugly.

Screaming, insults, threats, name calling, and yes....even a few punches were thrown.

Wow.

All over a Christmas picture.

or vanity.

or hormones.

or pent up anger.

Whatever the root of the craziness was...it was still the Christmas picture that started the whole thing!

The sad thing is, if it wouldn't have been a Christmas picture, it would have been something else.

Granted, the chaos today was a tad over the top...

but the reality is,

half of the time I feel like I am living on the funny farm!! (that was my dad's word)

And it isn't funny. It's stressful.

What goes on behind our closed doors is...scary.

I am just being honest.

Think about what we're dealing with.

I am extremely emotional and high strung.

Then there's Randy. Extremely non-emotional and oblivious.

Two teen-agers...

Bailor: know-it-all & family critic.

Hannah: tells you how the cow ate the cabbage (my mom's saying) and will chew you to shreds in a New York minute.

Two pre-teens.

Preston: highly annoying & an expert at instigating trouble.

Abbi: sneaky & plays the system (from what I hear from the others...of course she is my baby and I just don't see it)

Three dogs.

Two of which are yappers.

What does that sound like to you???

Remember when I ran away from home in August??

Now you can see why!

As I recovered from WWIII, I was feeling depressed.

Where have we gone wrong?

What in the world kind of madness are these children capable of??

What kind of mother am I???

Why doesn't Randy scare some sense into them????

They all need beatings.

Daily.

Then I remembered a scene from a random (very silly) Ashton Kutcher movie that I caught the tail end of the other night.

The Ashton character was having a hard time figuring out why he and his new wife were fighting so much and why things were going wrong if they were in love with one another.

He was having a heart to heart with his dad and his dad said this to him:

"Some days your mother and me loved each other. Other days we had to work at it. You never see the hard days in a photo album...but those are the ones that get you from one happy snapshot to the next."

I LOVE THAT!

Think of a dot to dot.

When you look at someone's scrapbook, you don't see the daily struggles that are the lines connecting all of the dots that are the pivotal moments & happy, fun memories.

When you look at my Christmas card picture, you will see only the end result...

the dot

that was that moment when we all smiled and looked at the camera

at once.

The thing is...without the lines,

the dots wouldn't connect.