Remembering Old Traditions and Creating New

I know it's been pretty quiet around The Single Sister lately...ok, it's been neglecto-blog of epic proportions. It's been a busy couple of months starting with meeting Pioneer Woman, then Mara's Birthday Party, Thanksgiving, the Mega Recital/Twin's Birthday Party/Bergeron Christmas Extravaganza, and lots of cooking, Christmas shopping, and pottery classes in between (hopefully I'll have some fun projects to share with everyone soon). And through everything Mark has been a trooper, going along with the crazy plans, and enjoying every minute of it. I hope. :)

Since I've kind of taken over the last two months with my family's plans I told him he had me all to himself over Christmas. We decided to have a quiet Christmas Eve in Owatonna, then Christmas Day head up to the cities to pick up Brooke and spend the day with his family. Well that quiet Christmas Eve didn't start out so quiet.

It started with waking up to someone knocking on our front door and ringing the doorbell at 1 in the morning. We didn't make it to the door, but saw a police officer walking back to his car. Whaa? It had snowed quite a bit and our cars were parked on the street. See, Owatonna does even odd street parking during winter to eliminate the need for snow emergencies. It takes some getting used to, but it's really not that much of a hassle. Till this morning. It was the 24th so we should have been on the even side. But there has always been a No Parking Thursday Morning sign (for the street sweepers)....and the 24th was a Thursday so we were parked on the other side of the street. All we could figure was the cop was warning us that our cars were going to be towed if we didn't move them. After some sleepy grumbling about No Parking signs vs. even odd parking Mark decided to move our cars to the back driveway of my apartment. (awww, my hero! LoL) We wanted to be sure that we wouldn't end up starting our Christmas Eve day with getting our cars towed...

Which leads to Marks part of the story...

How I became the 'talk' of Walmart Owatonna on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. I met a coworker at Walmart this morning so we could carpool to work this morning in her Honda Pilot (I was going to WM after work). Since the snow was covering the parking lines, I made sure to park next to the cart corral. When she dropped me off after work, I couldn't find my car. Fearing that my car had been towed, I walked into Walmart to ask customer service if they had towed any cars this morning completely expecting them to have no idea what I'm talking about. When I asked the woman at customer service, she immediately said, "oh no, are YOU the owner of the green Taurus?" Then, another customer service rep (mid-customer mind you) says, "oh wow, I think someone must of hit your car this morning and pushed it into the lane of traffic. It was backing up traffic for about a half hour this morning...customers were all complaining and everyone was talking about it!" She continued, "let me call Greg the Manager up here, he knows all about it". She calls Greg, "Greg, the guy with the Taurus is here". I meet Greg. Greg: "I think someone hit your car and pushed it into the lane of traffic". I explained that my car, with it's many dents and holes just looks like it had be hit, but that it probably wasn't. He then said, "we figured the car was stolen or abandoned based on how it looked and the fact that the doors were unlocked"..."we have you on video tape parking at 7:30am and leaving in another car"...Long story longer... apparently I must have parked my car in the middle of the traffic lane in the WM parking lot this morning, which caused several customer complaints, and got the attention of what seems like every WM employee, which resulted in my car being towed. I was most embarrassed when Greg said "you were right in the middle of the lane! I couldn't believe it! I even took a picture if you want to see it!"

He didn't want to see it. After getting his car out of the impound lot (thank god we were able to get it out before they closed for the day and closed for Christmas....and the weekend...that would have been one hell of an impound fee...probably more than the car is worth!) I said you should have asked to see the photo....and asked to get a copy to put up on peopleofwalmart.com. I love Mark, but his car fits right in with the things you see on peopleofwalmart.com.

Mara put it best: "So after getting up at 1am (!!) to move cars to not get TOWED, it got TOWED from the Walmart lot???? The event is unfortunate, but the timing is hilarious!!"

After the excitement of the day we settled in with some wild rice soup (made from a mix, easy, nothing like my Mom's) to watch A Christmas Story (I still stand by my thought that CJ looks an awful like Ralphie). We did some cooking for Christmas Day with Mark's family; raspberry rave, and pecan pie. Later we ate cookies, drank homemade egg nog, and opened presents. All in all it was a good day despite the bumpy start.

This morning we opened stockings (yes, we were cheesy and did stockings for each other) and are hoping that the weather will cooperate and let us drive north to the cities to continue our Christmas festivities.

Merry Christmas everyone! Here's to remembering old traditions and creating new ones! Well except for the towing part, we don't need that to become a tradition.