I Can't Stand it! I Know You Planned it! or This Year's Christmas Card

It's ostensibly Autumn. I'm not sure when this became, like, some national, sub-concious Parenting Law(tm) but, apparently, we're all supposed to take the kids to some sort of apple orchard/petting zoo/pumpkin farm/(Where the F is the bar around here?) country experience. I guess since my falls were spent watching combines and grain trucks crawl across the landscape, it still weirds me out that we have to pay to get a little hay in our hair.

Regardless, the boys and Katie went to the country experience place on the one sunny day we've had since mid-September and had a ye olde grande tyme.

Now, what I really want to talk about here is the annual damn Christmas card. Every year we (coughcoughKatiecoughcough) scour through our JPEGs to find the absolute epitome of the Look! At! Our! Cute! Kids! BTW! Merry! Christmas! picture. Then we get offended when we go over to our friends' houses and our picture isn't prominently placed on their fridge or mantle, preferably with it's own lighting. In my opinion, the best card we ever got was from a friend who snapped a picture with his a kids eating breakfast, smiling all cute, in the foreground and, in the background through the window behind them, there's dad, jumping crazily, kinda out of focus. Staged or not, it looked totally spontaneous and fun and seemed to more about what the last year had been about than posing your kids, oh, say. . . on some pumpkins.

So here's my nomination for this year's Christmas card: 





I want everyone, when they get it, to make a big sign that says: "Apple Tree Attack!" and then put both up on your fridge. Let's end the tyranny of the cute!







Oh, by the way, here's what will be this year's actual card: