Amusing in hindsight

Making sure that the magic of Christmas - read SANTA IS REAL - is maintained can be a tricky prospect.

At about 5pm on Christmas eve Father and Husband started to assemble the brand new bicycle that was purchased on Amazon.com - wait, no, that Santa delivered - for darling Gryphon. They put it together, and found that a very important part was missing. THE SEAT.

Seriously, the seat was missing. Really? Is it actually possible for a bike to be delivered, in parts, without the seat? Apparently it is. THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS WILL BE RUINED!!!!

So, in utter freak out mode, Husband and I drove to the only place open at 5pm on Christmas eve in small town southwestern Virginia, WAL-MART, in the hopes of finding a replacement seat.

After much freaking out and humming and hawing, a whole other bike was bought, just to steal the seat. And all this was done in an incredible rush of course because the 24 hour Wal-Mart Supercenter was actually closing. Apparently they close on Christmas Eve at 6pm, not to open again until the day after Christmas when the store is overrun with scary rednecks looking for an after-Christmas deal. Who knew!

So we put a completely mismatched seat on the bike we had at home, and forced it to fit with a bit of creativity. (Did you know that bike seat posts are not universally sized? Annoying.)

But would the magic of Christmas be ruined for Gryphon? Would she know? Would she see the pink and purple seat on the blue and yellow bike and say "Santa has no sense of color! What's wrong with him? Maybe he's not real!" Oh, the horror!

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8am Christmas morning (yes, we managed to get the girls to sleep that late) - Down the stairs come two very excited girls. . . Fletcher runs straight to her extra cool new trike - YES!

Gryphon takes a cursory look at her brand new bike, with a mismatched seat, and goes straight to the rest of the presents under the tree. Cool bike, but hey, who cares?

Four year olds are completely unpredictable. And mommy needs a Zanex.