The Big Blowout Labor Day Fall Preview Extravaganza Bonanza

In this Fall Preview issue:

1. In-laws and by extension, sex.
2. Football
3. Christmas
4. Mario Kart Wii
5. Apples
6. Football
7. Pumpkins
8. Halloween
9. Leaves
10. Thanksgiving - Football
11. Christmas
12. Football

Hi, this is the kids. Our dad was supposed to have written the Big Blowout Labor Day Fall Preview Extravaganza Bonanza by now, but he has spent the past week working, poring over his fake football teams, and playing too much Mario Kart, so he had us write it instead. Unfortunately, by now some retail stores have started putting their Christmas trees out on display, so fall is over. We missed our chance. We'll do it anyway, as practice for next year. We've never written a Big Blowout Labor Day Fall Preview Extravaganza Bonanza before, so we hope it meets all of your expectations. 

But first, we had a question for all of you parents, one that our parents won't answer. Please help answer it for us!

We were wondering if we had in-laws. We're fascinated by the concept of in-laws, so we asked our mother last week who ours were. She said you had to be married to have in-laws, but since we're not married, we are adopting Daddy's family as our in-laws. We decided that since we came out of Mommy's belly, that we would share her in-laws. Then we asked, since we came out of Mommy's belly, what role exactly does Daddy have in the whole process? They wouldn't answer that question, either, except to say that it's too soon to talk about birds and bees, and that there's no time to be visiting aviaries and apiaries. We're SO confused. Can you help?

BIRDS

BEES

On that note, on with the Fall Preview...fall around here means football season, and we helped our dad pick his Fantasy Football teams by insisting he take our favorite player-- Minnesota Vikings tight end Kyle Rudolph-- every chance he gets. Rudolph is the only active player in the NFL named after one of Santa's reindeer, so he's our favorite this year, just like he was last year, and the year before that. We tried to get into Nathan Vasher, the "Kansas Comet" Gale Sayers, and even Ed Donder, but none of them really grabbed our attention. In fact, we just made Ed Donder up because he sounds like an offensive lineman from the 1950s Chicago Cardinals. At some point, there will be a player with the first name of Blitzen, then he will be our favorite, and we'll kick Kyle Rudolph to the curb.

And speaking of Christmas, all the oldest among us will want is her two front teeth, since she lost them both within two days of each other, which is a relief, because she was beginning to look like these people. The tooth fairy, however, apparently lost all her gold coins, so she gave her a dollar and a pack of gum. Seeing his sister turn such a handsome profit, the oldest boy is now tying his teeth to oncoming trains.

By the way, the reason our dad is playing so much Mario Kart is that we are making him. Because little did we know that Elsa's twin sister Rosalina is hiding in that game somewhere. All Daddy has to do to unlock her is earn a Star rating on each of the eight Mirror Cups (something he has been unable to do since he bought the game in 2008) or the more direct route, race 250,000 more times. Then he'll unlock Rosalina and immediately enroll in carpal tunnel therapy. And what will we do with Rosalina once she is unlocked? Probably absolutely nothing. 

Congratulations? On what? Six years and still many, many races from unlocking Elsa...er...Rosalina.

Let's turn our attention to some outdoor pursuits coming our way this fall. We see a trip to the apple orchard in our future. We just had one in our very recent past...last weekend, in fact. The first weekend all summer where it actually felt like summer, down to the sweat seeping through our butt cracks. We rode on the John Deere tractor (our little brother's favorite part) and sniffed the gas fumes out to the field where we picked 86 pounds of apples that we'll never eat -- unless our parents painstakingly remove every inch of skin off of them-- and even then we'll neglect them the minute we spot a stray Go-gurt in the back of the refrigerator and pitch a fit when we're told it's been there since 2009 and is probably no good. Mom has a busy autumn ahead of her on Pinterest, making edible football helmets out of apples with two bites of them, and Dad has a busy season of dolloping whipped cream all over everything. We'll eat countless bags of Welch's fruit snacks between meals and our parents will ask, in vain, "How about a crisp, fresh, hand-picked apple instead?" "Naaaah." We're doing this again in a month, by the way, because there will be "different" apples available. We won't eat those, either.

We come back to football because the middle one of us is playing flag football this fall. In an ironic twist, these games are mostly scheduled for Sunday afternoons at 1PM. Daddy frowns every time he thinks about this and has said on multiple occasions the only things purposely scheduled for Sundays at 1PM were open houses. Daddy is trying really hard to not be "that Dad" who pays more attention to the scoring updates on his phone than he does to his child. Don't be surprised, though, if he thinks he's posting a cute picture on this site of his son running to glory with his flags waving behind him in the fall breeze, when it's actually a screenshot of the Jaguars/Titans scoring summary. :-(

Around early to mid-October, we will pick out our pumpkins for Halloween. Dad has discussed Halloween in the past so we're just making sure we're on our best behavior so we don't have to go as grapes this year. The pumpkin picking remains the same...the two boys go and pick out the biggest, most misshapen, unwieldy pumpkins they can find and make Dad carry them back to the wagon, while big sister finds a petite thing that she could almost wear as jewelry if she wanted. Then sis finds two gourds, both shaped like ladles, one smooth and the other bumpy, for the front porch. She always picks a bumpy gourd. She's a great friend to bumpy gourds everywhere.

Then comes November, which, if it weren't for Thanksgiving, wouldn't have a whole lot going for it other than sleet. At least the elections are over early in the month. Dad spends most of the month blowing leaves into piles and raking them onto the tarp then dumping them in our backyard bog, which gets boggier when he adds 22 tarploads of wet leaves to it. He says it's better than helping us clean our toy kitchen set three times per weekend. 

We get Veterans Day, November 11, off from school, which we feel is important. Thankfully the United States retains some of its senses and puts Veterans Day ahead of frivolous, meathead holiday ideas like First Day of Baseball Season and Day After Super Bowl. Daddy already gives out candy canes on the first Sunday of football season; that's enough sporting celebration.

Sometime in November, although you're never quite sure when-- because anticipation, because page clicks, because trendiness, because money-- the local terrestrial radio station reminds us it still exists by shifting to the all Christmas-music format, and Daddy goes batshit crazy. Daddy loves Christmas music so much that we'll give him an aneurysm if we tell him we don't want to hear it any more. We play along, memorizing the words to "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" and "Dominic the Donkey" but we think one of these years, Dad is going to crank the Christmas Pandora station in August and sit, trance-like, staring at the TV, watching pre-season football and reminding us how much all the gifts in the "12 Days of Christmas" would actually cost today, adjusted for inflation. We just hope he waits until he's retired. 

And oh yeah, Thanksgiving! Really, Dad says, if you're going to declare a new National Holiday, it should just be December. You stuff your faces during Christmas Lite (the erstwhile Thanksgiving), then 3-4 weeks later, all the Christmas preparation comes to a head, you stuff your faces again, and then "whoosh" it's New Year's a week later. America, just take the whole month off and go be good capitalists, spend your money and tell work to shove off. You've got Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby playing in your head the whole day anyway, so you're useless at work. 

(Meanwhile, June and August just sit there, wondering what they needed to do to get a decent holiday..."We coulda put on a helluva New Year's Eve Fireworks display, Junie Baby..." August might say. Might. Instead they get stifling humidity and mosquitoes.)

Other names for Thanksgiving:
1. Christmas with crappier music
2. Christmas with less presents
3. Christmas with more mincemeat pie (gag)
4. Practice Christmas
5. Christmas Lite
6. 10-12 Straight Hours of Football on a Thursday
7. Christmas without all the hype
8. Christmas without the expense
9. Pressure-free Christmas
10. The sane alternative to Christmas

And thus wraps up our Fall Preview. Today Dad will watch football and hand out candy, and we'll sit and make our Christmas lists. No! No we won't! We'll enjoy the season that leads into Christmas, but we're not becoming so infatuated with Christmas that it runs our lives...football, on the other hand... Go Steelers! Enjoy fall, everyone!

A Big Hallmark Book of Christmas Ornaments Has Arrived!

Since hers is "Limited Edition" I hope my daughter picked out an ornament slightly more original than this.

Of course it has. Because Independence Day is practically over, and now that 2013 is officially half over, it's time to start ordering limited edition Christmas stuff in case it goes out of stock so you can hide it somewhere that you'll never look when you actually need it, which is to say the season when the jolly, fat elf gets all the credit for your foresight and preparation and awesome parenting.

Considering all the junk mail that falls harmlessly into our recycling bin daily, I was suspicious how this piece caught my daughter's eye and not the repeated attempts to get me to slash my mortgage payments in half. Wait a minute, this wasn't junk mail! My wife actually picked it up at the mall yesterday and has already pre-ordered my daughter's ornament for Xmas 2013. That blows my mind. Look, I know dads like me tend to think we can do most things just as well as moms, but this is something I am wholly not wired for, planning for Christmas while I sweat profusely and beg for my third shower of the day after cutting the grass. Something seems inherently wrong about the whole concept.

My daughter, then, has her ornament already lined up for Xmas 2013, a full 174 days before Christmas but only around 56 before the tree goes up. (Another good reason we pre-pre-pre-ordered.) It's a Wizard of Oz-themed number large enough to eat off of.  Actually, I have no idea what she's getting, but anything Wizard of Oz themed is always a good guess, whether it's Christmas ornaments, clothing, DVDs co-starring Tom and Jerry (?? We own it and I still don't get it) or the style of rain gutters to put on the house.

The amazing part is, if we hadn't ordered it by July 13 or some such meaningless date in the middle of baseball-only season, the entire line would have been sold out and Christmas ruined. Ruined, I tell you, 160 days before it even happens. Not cool. This never happens on the other holidays. Unless you tell me you've seen roadside stands just across state borders open on Christmas Eve selling bottle rockets and Roman candles? Is that not just as important?

Tonight, my daughter opened the (90-page!) catalog to the sports section and plopped it down in front of me and flatly asked, "Need anything?" I didn't know what she was showing me and what she had just said, so when I asked her to repeat, the response was an even flatter "Need anything," as if she's on her way to WalMart. But now that she has ordered her ornament, everyone else in the family has to get theirs. Wait, can't I just live through July first?

I'm sorry, but when presented with choices of who will represent my distinguished tastes on our family Christmas tree this year, I'm going to need more time. Unfortunately, the 2013 class of ornamental athletes is limited, ranging from Hall of Famers to the merely above average. We have:

Drew Brees - future Hall of Famer, holds record for most consecutive games with a TD pass. Most girls think he's cute.

Marcus Allen - Hall of Fame running back who somehow managed to lose a fumble in almost every playoff game he played in. Both the Kansas City Chief and LA Raider versions available. Most non-football fans have no idea who he is.

Shannon Sharpe - Hall of Fame tight end. Both the Bronco and Raven versions available. Has a very loud mouth.

James Harrison - Not going to the Hall of Fame. After the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl and were invited to the White House, he accused the Prez of front-running: "He never would have invited us if we had lost." Well, DUH. Despite being a linebacker, he is shown carrying the football, which can mean only one thing.

Joe Theismann - Of course this happened.

Nolan Ryan - Hall of Fame pitcher. Struck out more hitters in baseball than anyone ever.

Bobby Orr - Hall of fame defenseman and only 3rd or 4th best hockey player ever.

How those last two got in there with a wider array of football players is a question best left for the suits at Hallmark. I'm leaning toward bagging all the athletes and just going with the standard "Second Christmas with Three Kids" ornament, perhaps made by the same people who make the people who have no faces.

One person unaffected and undistracted by all this Christmas talk is the soon-to-be four-year-old, who has a birthday 15 excruciatingly long days away. He's been looking forward to his birthday since his sister dominated the month of March with hers, so he's keeping his eyes on the July prize, which includes his request (demand) of a cake featuring Caillou dressed as a hockey player. We'll see what we can do, kid, but in the meantime don't start worrying about Christmas ornaments, there's still a little 2013 left, right?