"Presents! Everywhere!"

Ian and I have put up our christmas tree on Thanksgiving night every year since we got married. I don't participate in Black Friday, so I don't have to go to bed early and he does, but he just pulls an allnighter, so it's the perfect time to put it up. We don't have to worry about how late we are up, and we watch a christmas movie, we get into PJs, I usually drink hot cocoa and it's the "Ross Christmas Tree Ceremony." It's one of my very favorite nights throughout the whole year.

This year, however, was different. This year we have two kittens who are in the destruction to everything stage. I was a little worried about this, but they seem to respond fairly well to disciplinary action, so I tried not to dwell on it too much. BIG MISTAKE.

1. Getting the tree out of the holiday closet: I walk to the library, open door. Kittens with supersonic hearing hear the door open. They come running. They both shoot into holiday closet and immediately disappear among boxes. I pull tree out and drag it to the living room, then go back to get kittens out of holiday closet. They aren't there. I search everywhere, get irritated, decide to lock them in there to teach them a lesson. I walk back to the living room to find christmas tree container moving. The kittens managed to crawl into the one container I was pulling out anyway. Get kittens out of box, and shoo them away. Ian distracts them with shiny stuff.

2. Assembling the christmas tree: I do my super important job of putting the tree base into the perfect position while Ian pulls the heavier part of the tree out and places it into said base. So far, so good, kittens still distracting with shiny stuff. I pull out the second part of the christmas tree. For some reason unknown to man, this action attracts kittens. Now intrigued, they run full force into the bottom part of the already assembled tree and scoot it out of perfect position. I distract them with a ball of yarn (yes this is cliche, but it totally works on my kittens) and they are sufficiently distracted. We manage to get the rest of the tree put up with relative ease.

3. Lighting the christmas tree: We do have a pre-strung christmas tree, but the order in which the lights connect to each other have absolutely no rhyme or reason and I tossed the instructions three years ago (because who really needs them??) so we just plug them together randoming until all the lights are on. As soon as the first set of lights came on, they had the kittens' attention again. Doctor tried to gnaw on a light only to burn his tongue, Olive just sat and stare wide-eyed for about 30 second and then went batpoop crazy and tried to destroy the tree. The problem was that now that the lights were on, there was no way to distract them from the tree, and we needed the lights on to tell when they were all connected properly. We slid the cats away, we lightly swatted them, I tried holding them while Ian desperately attempted to get everything connected. We finally decided to let them lay near, but not touch, the tree. It seemed to work best. I only had to swat their paws a couple times a piece before they realized they could look but not touch.

4. Decorating the christmas tree: This is when all hell broke loose. Most of our ornaments are plastic anyway, thank the Lord, so it was mostly chasing down cats with ornaments in tow, or to replace the ornaments they swatted off. Ian used mean voice on them and they kept the swatting to a minimum a.k.a. when Ian wasn't looking only. This part took the longest as it normally does, but it was ungodly long this time because of all the interference from the two cat demons from hell.

5. Finishing the rest of the house decorations: piece of cake. Kittens liked the tree, didn't give two hoots about anything else.

After the tree was assembled, everything calmed down, cats lost interest, we forgot that they were unholy creatures sent to torment us during the Christmas season. Until Saturday. Saturday night Ian took me on a spontaneous late night Palace movie date night, and all was well. Ian had decided to put my presents under the tree already to taunt my with their wrappedupness and I was NOT appreciating it. I just wanted to rip them apart and have them already.

When we got back from the movies, Ian was dallying behind in his car messing with something so I was the first into the house. As soon as I flipped on the hallway light, I saw two flashes, white and black, shoot into the library. Immediately suspicious I hurried to the living room, knowing that Olive and Doctor only willingly went into their room if they were hungry, thirsty, or about to be in huge trouble. In this case, I was absolutely sure they were about to be in trouble. Once I turned on the light to the living room, I saw that they had apparently played some form of "present hockey" or soccer or basketball. SOMETHING. My presents (wrapped as much as I could see) were EVERYWHERE.

Me: PRESENTS! EVERYWHERE! OH, IT IS CHRISTMAS! (doctor who quote)
Ian: What do you mean, presents everywhere?
Me: My presents are all over! Maybe some are opened!
Ian: Don't you lay a single finger on any of those presents or I will send them all back! Don't move a muscle.

I was immediately shunned to the closest room (the laundry room) to sit and wait for Ian to inspect all the presents for any damage. Satisfied there were none, he let me out and went into the library with the kittens. I heard a lot of mean voice (no raised volume, just harsher tone). Then he came out of the room with a kitten in each arm, both looking sheepish. We spent the rest of the night curled up on the couch, watching "How I Met Your Mother" and cuddling with the apparently apologetic, suddenly cuddly kittens.