Well we did that. Blew right through 2012. And in typical Rossi fashion, we finished off December 31st the way we had most of the year, in a mess. Yesterday Peter woke up with fantastic inspiration to take the kids sledding, pick up some crickets for the frog and lizard for their New Year's feast, grab a bottle of champagne (or two), and rent a few movies from Mr. Movies. We had planned on snuggling in for an evening of Vietnamese summer rolls and lobster tails, movies with the little kids, bedtime for little ones, and then a push for midnight with champagne and movies for the big kids. After some morning chores, Peter pulled out the inner tube penguins and inflated them only to find leaks in both of them. Of course, having the perseverance that only belongs deep inside Peter, he tried to repair them twice, resulting in ultimate failure. With a four-year-old and a five-year-old standing guard and asking four hundred times when they were going sledding, Peter finally tossed in the towel and headed up to Walmart to purchase new sleds.
As I was pleasantly ensconced in my kitchen whipping up some goodies for the day, the girls were happily watching Dora the Explorer. Then the phone call came. "Sabrina, can you come to Walmart. I've lost my keys somewhere in here. I was distracted by the kids and think I put them in the cart." He had left the cart at the door, walked back to the pickup and realized his error. By the time he had returned to the entrance to get his cart back, someone had already grabbed it and went shopping. Peter just got this pickup and the dealership did not have a second set of keys for it when we purchased it...and of course we had yet to make and extra set.
When I arrived at Walmart, it was disgustingly busy, like ants crawling in and out and over each other. Possibly worse than Christmas eve. I found the pickup with Peter and the boys standing next to it. The boys loaded in the van to stay warm. The next four hours were spent with me driving through the parking lot looking at shopping carts for an errant set of keys, popping down to Dairy Queen to get the kids something to eat, driving Peter back and forth between Walmart and the Ford dealership across the interstate, and sitting in the van entertaining children while Peter talked to customer service reps all over Walmart. Me, naively believing that most people are good Samaritans, thought we could just leave the pickup there overnight and try again the next day. However, after a discussion with the police, there arose concern that based on the key fob to open Peter's truck, there was a high risk that after the parking lot cleared out that evening, it would be easy to identify the vehicle and steal it simply by a press of the button if some devious fellow had found the keys. So, being AAA members, the truck was towed over to Ford where two new sets of keys were made, for a price.
When Peter had called me, it was 12:30. I returned home with four kids in tow around quarter to five and frantically tossed together a dinner. We managed to get the "Yoppa tails" (Nina an Jocelyn verbiage) cooked, whip together the summer rolls and sit down to a chaotic dinner. As we were seated to chow down, Ethan looked at us and said, "I don't feel good," resulting in a 101 degree temperature. This was followed by Nina saying her stomach hurt, and Samuel saying he wasn't hungry because of the emergency Dairy Queen run where he ate a hot dog. As I medicated Ethan for his horrible headache and gave the girls juice, Peter popped in a movie. Peter and I finished the year on each end of the table cleaning up plates alone, exhausted from the insane holidays and nervous about Peter's keys because they contained much more than just his truck keys. As of early this morning, they have yet to be located.
Midnight eventually came and we kissed each other and 2012 good bye. After all we've been through this past year, we can embrace that we have weathered another storm as a family, and learned a lot about patience and home construction. Happy New Year everyone, I hope to see you a lot more in 2013. Because if I do, that means 2013 isn't quite as maddening as 2012 was.
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