Behind the Scenes of our Christmas Photo

If you follow More Kids Than Suitcases on Facebook then you've already seen this, but for those of you who don't, this is the Christmas picture that we posted to our followers on Christmas Day.

Seven Different Excuses to Visit Disneyland

It's been a while since I've had something to contribute to Disney's Wordless Wednesday, but today's topic of "celebrate" is an easy one for me. We've taken advantage of just about every opportunity imaginable to visit a Disney park, but sometimes we seem to be stretching things with our reasons to celebrate. I mean, everybody goes to Disneyland to celebrate birthdays or Christmas, and even just having an extra day seems to draw a crowd. A really big crowd.

The 12th Day of Christmas - Travel Version

The final day, and lover boy pulls out his big finale...Twelve drummers drumming. Are you kidding me? Dude, I take it you've thrown in the towel on this relationship, because the one thing you don't want to do is leave your beloved in a room full of musicians. I mean, I know they're drummers and all. It's not like you brought her a dozen guitarists-guitaring or lead singers-singing, but even the drummers get to lay claim to a little bit of that rock star charisma. Essentially what you've done is put the lady you're trying to gain favor with in a position where she's going to be hit on multiple times each day, and don't even get me started on what you've done to the poor dancers dancing or the maids-a-milking. All you've accomplished with this gift is make your life harder, as it's hard to resist a guy with a drum kit.

How do you think I got Lori's attention?

The 11th Day of Christmas - Travel Version

For a brief, shining moment, I thought this was a great gift. I mean, with all these people (and birds) that you've added to the house, it made complete sense to me that you'd need to improve your plumbing systems. At the very least you were going to need to install a few showers to accommodate the ladies dancing and the Lords leaping. Then my wife pointed out to me that they probably weren't those kind of pipers. Apparently they're bagpipe players, making this the worst gift in the history of gift giving. One bagpipe player should be enough of a reason for this guy to get dumped. Eleven of them, and I'm pretty sure the recipient would be immune from prosecution no matter what happened to their "true love". 

Now that's a real Piper Piping

The 10th Day of Christmas - Travel Version

It's just occurred to me that as I write about these lavish gifts being given, that I might be setting Lori up for a little disappointment. Spending twelve days recapping another mans massive romantic gestures then having your wife unwrap a pair of gloves on Christmas morning might just be a bit of a letdown. Of course if she thinks I'm going to take my inspiration from the 10 Lords-a-Leaping, she's sadly mistaken. Why would anybody want ten dudes jumping around their house, even if they are Lords? This has to be confusing to the birds as heads keep popping up in the middle of their flight paths, and then there's the fact that it takes a really special man to be able to pull off style, poise, and grace while leaping around the place.

Obviously NOT a really special man

The 9th Day of Christmas - Travel Version

OK, this guy has lost me now. I was a little confused as to what he was getting at when he made gifts out of 23 birds over the course of seven days, but now in the last 48 hours he's brought over 17 people. How is that romantic? I can kind of understand the maids...I mean, who doesn't want somebody else to take care of the housework for them. What's with the dancers though? I guess it might be interesting to watch them for a few minutes, but after that they're pretty much just going to be cluttering up the house. Also, what kind of dancers were they? If they're doing ballet, it should be fairly easy to forget about them. If they're tap dancers, you're going to have a massive headache, and it's really going to play havoc with your floors.

The 8th Day of Christmas - Travel Version

I may have been wrong. For six of the last seven days, I've been complaining about how bizarre it must be to have your loved one continually showing up with gifts of birds, but there's not much higher on the weirdness scale that you can go than bringing over 8 maids-a-milking as a Christmas gift. How do you react when your true love (Although let's be honest...she's got to be questioning this relationship by now.) comes through the door followed by eight women (I assume they left the cows outside) and says "Ta-da! Here's your present!" It's creepy on so many levels. Also, how did milking end up being the maids job? Lori's parents were dairy farmers, and I don't recall ever seeing a maid doing the milking on their farm. Unless there's some pictures they're not sharing with us.

The 7th Day of Christmas - Travel Version

This is it! The end of the birds. With today's seven swans-a-swimming our romantic hero has now dropped 23 birds on his true loves doorstep, three more than necessary to declare her house an official bird sanctuary. I wonder if he's including any bird seed with all these gifts? It's really not much of a gift if you have to spend $100 a month buying food for all these animals. Not that I'd know what to feed them anyways. I wonder what swans eat?

I don't know about real swans, but apparently towel swans eat chocolate.

The 6th Day of Christmas - Travel Version

And.....he's back to birds. Bigger birds this time. No more of the cute little things that can rest on a branch of a pear tree. Now he's up to full size birds who, from my childhood recollection, get a little testy if you don't share your food with them fast enough. Also, why are these geese-a-laying? That's gotta make a heck of a mess in the house with eggs lying all over the place. I guess this is the kind of stuff you can get away with when you show up on the fifth day with five golden rings.

Photo: Creative Commons / Michael Gil

The 5th Day of Christmas - Travel Version

I think we all know what happened here. Tired of her house being overrun by birds, the recipient of all these gifts finally took her suitor aside and told him "Look, if you want to still be around here by day twelve, I want to see something under the tree that doesn't want to make a nest in it!" Romeo responds by picking up five golden rings. Dude....overkill much? I once bought Lori two silver rings on a chain and I was golden for three months. Granted the rings were from Tiffany's and I hadn't just dumped a dozen birds on her, but I still think five rings is a little excessive.

The 4th Day of Christmas - Travel Version

OK, I'm going to ask the obvious question here. What's this guys fascination with birds? For the fourth day in a row, he comes trotting over to his true loves house with some form of winged creature, this time deciding that blackbirds would make an ideal Christmas present. If there was any doubt about the depth of his girlfriends love for him it can certainly be put to rest by now. Lori would have kicked me to the curb a long time ago in this gift giving fiasco.

Colly Bird? Beats me. It's black. That's close enough for me.

The 3rd Day of Christmas - Travel Version

It's not really a great day to be writing this. I write a lot of my posts with a not very serious tone, and I focus on the laughter, but I don't feel much like laughing today. The events of yesterday in Connecticut leave me broken-hearted and hurting for the people affected, and really all I want to do today is curl up in a ball and feel sad. It's not very fun or frivolous, but it's kind of the way I feel right now.

The 2nd Day of Christmas - Travel Version

Welcome back to the 12 Days of Christmas - Travel Version. Today is the second day of Christmas. Yesterday we replaced the rather inconvenient partridge in a pear tree with a night at the Treehouse Treesort in Takilma, Oregon. An excellent trade if I do say so myself. Today we're dealing with "Two Turtle Doves". Great. More birds.

Do you know what Turtle Doves are? They're pretty much pigeons. Somehow I can't see myself presenting my wife with two pigeons for Christmas as a symbol of our undying love. I mean, if that's what she wanted, I'd make it happen, but I went down through her list and although there's a bit of an illegible scribble between "Tiffanys" and "Porsche", I don't think it says "pigeons". Failing clarification, we're going to have to do better, and I have a perfect gift for the second day of Christmas.

The 1st Day of Christmas - Travel Version

Has anybody ever bought you a partridge in a pear tree? Me neither, although I have to admit that I'm not that disappointed. I'm not a real bird person, and I wouldn't even begin to know how to take care of a partridge. Plus there's the whole pear tree thing to deal with. Does the partridge have to stay in the tree? Do I keep the pear tree inside or outside? Does the partridge eat the pears (that would be handy), or do I have to feed him something else? Truthfully, as a first day of Christmas gift, I don't think I'd be that impressed.

Those probably aren't partridges are they?

How to Cancel a Trip

It's life. You don't always get to choose the circumstances in which you live, and despite all my enthusiasm for traveling, there are some things that are more important. Occasionally those things will raise their heads, and travel has to become a secondary consideration. It's happened to us this Christmas, and unfortunately, we're finding ourselves needing to be closer to home than a trip to Anaheim allows. We've put it off as long as possible, hoping for a different solution, but now it's time to cancel our trip.

Friends of MKTS - The World is a Book

Blog Address: www.theworldisabook.com
Facebook: The World is a Book
Twitter: @WorldBookTravel

WHO ARE THEY? - Mary claims to be an island girl, now married and living with her two kids in San Diego. I guess she gets credit for being an island girl since she was born in the Philippines, but in my mind you're not truly an island girl until I've seen a picture of you in a coconut bra and a grass skirt. As closely as I've read her site, I can't recall ever seeing Mary dressed up in an outfit like that. Her husband sure...but we're talking about Mary here.

The Resolutions Revisited

It's December 7th. That means that there's only 24 days left this year, which also means that there are 342 days of this year behind us. That's how much time I've had to work on my New Years resolutions for 2012. It's strange but when you have 342 days ahead of you, it seems like enough time to accomplish almost anything. When the 342 days are behind you though, it seems like you barely had time to scratch the surface of everything you intended to do. Don't let the clock manufacturers fool you...time definitely has two different speeds depending on which way you're looking.

Light Up the Vines

I'm a big fan of Christmas light displays. Not the actual assembling of them...I think I've made it clear that I have no talent at all when it comes to putting the Christmas lights up...but I love looking at the houses that go all out to drain their local power grid and ensure that nobody on their block sleeps before midnight. That's probably why the event "Light up the Vines" appealed to me. The concept, at least as I understood it, was that all the wineries along Bottleneck Drive in Summerland (about 20 minutes south of Kelowna), were going to string Christmas lights around their vineyards, and for two nights the public would be welcome to make the rounds among the wineries to see the displays and, of course, to visit the gift shops for some late night wine tasting and Christmas shopping. It sounded like a fun evening out.

Travel Through the Tree

One of the reasons my wife gives for having to go shopping in every town we visit, is that she likes to collect Christmas ornaments from the various places we go. This is actually one of the (very few) shopping activities that I approve of (like I get a vote), as it's pretty cool to stand there and look at your Christmas tree and think back over all the great trips you've had through the years. 

This weekend, the tree went up in our house, and while I wasn't around to help set it up (Believe me, they plan it that way), I got a chance yesterday to take a look over all the different ornaments hanging on the tree.

Ah yes...the Disneyland 50th Anniversary ornament. That was a good memory. What else do we have? 

The Trek to Layer Cake Mountain

We have something unique to the world here in Kelowna. Other than being the birth place for two of the three MKTS children, an event which the city still hasn't managed to find funds to commemorate, Kelowna is the home of Layer Cake Mountain. This mountain was formed from lava flows a long time ago, but what makes it unique is the even layers in which the lava hardened. Scientists used to think that it was the result of numerous separate lava flows over time, but now the popular theory is that it was just one big lava flow. As for why it hardened in equal layers...well that's a good God question. If you prefer though, and you understand a lot of big words, there's a sort of explanation here.