YES.  THANK YOU, SIR.

Anyway, 2009 = great.  I give it an…A-.  Which, if you’re a solid B/B- student (moi), you’ll find that to be quite satisfactory indeed.

But alas, on to 2010.  Which sounds so futuristic, right? I feel like a Jetson already.  Where’s my jet pack?

Today, I want to share a Christmas story with you.  It’s a bad Christmas story.  No Santa, no quiet meditations on Luke 2 by a crackling fire.  This is the story of how it took us 32 hours to drive from Amarillo to Birmingham.

Now, it normally take about 14 hours (give or take, depending on whether you’re driving with a certified lunatic [my father] who will not allow passengers to use the restroom, or an infant) to make this drive.  We made it in about 15 on the way there.  And friends, 15 hours in the car is no small potatoes.  It’s very large potatoes.  It’s a large helping of potato salad.  But, dear Lord, if we only knew what waited for us on the other end of our trip.

Christmas Eve, 7pm: We finished loading up the Kia Rondo (that’s right, we rented) with the truly absurd amount of things we accumulated on our trip and said a teary farewell to my family.  Well, I did anyway.  We started driving down Hwy 287.  We usually through Oklahoma, but Oklahoma was closed.  The whole state.  Because of the Great Snowpocalypse of 2009.  So, we thought we’d be clever and go around it.

Don’t get clever with Mother Nature.  She’s not interested in your cleverness.

Christmas Eve, 10:30pm: Childress, TX.  We stop to use el bano and I suggest we “just top off the tank.”  This move solidifies my awesomeness for years to come.

Christmas Eve, 11pm: Traffic stops.

Let me pause here and mention that it is icy.  And it snowed the day before.  But there is no reason for alarm.

Christmas Day, 12:01am: We decide to scour Twitter to see if we can find like-minded individuals who might be further along in traffic that can give us a heads-up about what MUST be a wreck or something.  Here is what we find:

“@TxDOT we have been onHWY287 4 over 8hrs.  PLs send help,food,water ASAP.”

“Stuck on HWY 287 outside WFalls. We’re never getting out of here.”

“Can any1 see what’s going on with HWY 287?”

Despair.  Despair.  Despair.

We tweet with some people that are further up in traffic.  They have apparently been sitting in the EXACT same position for going on 8 hours already.  WHAT?  At this point, we raise our fists to the heavens and curse Doppler Dave for COMPLETELY NEGLECTING to inform ANYONE that HWY 287 is apparently closed for business.

Christmas Day, 2am: Not much has changed, except our spirits aren’t great.  We silently consider eating one another.

Christmas Day, 4am: We keep cranking the car, warming it up and then shutting her down again to conserve gas.

Christmas Day, 6am: We have to pee.  We are in the part of Texas where it’s flat.  If you pee, everyone around you is gonna get a show.

Christmas Day, 8am: We move!  Oh Sweet LORD!  We are movi-ok.  That’s it.  That’s all we moved.

Christmas Day, 10am: The infant we are traveling with (did you forget about the 4 month old newborn in the

backseat?) decides she’s angry.  And she’s had enough.  I envy her ability to throw a tantrum.  And to wear a diaper and pee at will.

Christmas Day, 2pm: We are moving.  We move.  Oh, I’m so happy.  We still have to pee.  So much.  Aaaaaand we stop.  About the length of a football field.  I now have the understanding that I will certainly die on this road that God forgot.

Christmas Day, 3pm: Ben gives in and trespasses on someone’s property to pee.  He returns as Moses would.

Christmas Day, 4pm: The family in front of us finds a dead mouse in the snow.  They play with it.  We contemplate eating them.

Christmas Day, 5pm: Great day in the morning.  We finally move.  There are so many cars abandoned on the road.  So many jack-knifed semis.  All Ben can say is: “It’s like the apocalypse.”   We learn around now that we were a part of a 50 mile long string of traffic.  We also learn that many people went crazy and took golf clubs to their side mirrors.  Again, I envy these people who operate with complete emotional abandon.

Christmas Day, 5:30pm: We reach a rest stop.  So has the rest of the world.  It’s a one bathroom.  The girl in front of me fights down her gag reflex.  I sacrifice dignity, hygiene, and self-respect and use what could loosely be referred to as a “restroom.”  There is freedom in an empty bladder.  I vow never to drink water or any liquid ever again.

Christmas Day, 6pm: We stop at some chicken place to eat.  We’re so hungry, yet dazed.  Are we still in Texas?  It’s been almost 24 hours and we’re not even out of Texas.  We eat chicken.  Holland gets pouty.

The Day After Christmas, 3am: We arrive home.  We stumble inside.  The baby is completely dazed.  She has no idea what’s become of her life.  We share her sentiment.

It’s a funny story now.  All told, it took us about 32 hours to make it all the way home.  And we really did not get the worst of it, as friends of ours traveled the same road the next day and flipped their car three times.  Awful.

The great part about this is that we can look back at Holland’s First Christmas and know with great certainty that she can’t possibly ever have a worse Christmas than her first.  There’s nowhere to go but up.

Knock on wood.

Some people (I won’t say who) might think (are fixated on the fact) that Holls looks more like Ben (they are obviously wrong).  And some people might know that she looks like me.  And I can’t help it that they are right.

I have no idea why I get incredibly offended when people say she looks like Ben.  Clearly, she is half of him, so it stands to reason that she might look at least a little bit like him.  But it irks me.  There is no current research being done on my craziness.

But anyway, deciphering who a baby looks more like is not mere guesswork.  Through the miracle of technology, you can see our own baby pictures and decide for yourself.  And I’m provided you with just that opportunity.  Lucky you.

So, here’s the deal.  Below are two pictures (Picture A and Picture B).  One picture is of Ben, and one is of me; I won’t tell you which (although you will obviously choose me).  Your job is to choose which picture looks more like Holls (Picture C).  Leave a comment with your now highly formed opinion and we’ll see who wins.  I’ll even randomly choose a comment-or and write a post about how awesome they are.  I swear.  Even if they vote against me (which they will obviously not do, since it flies in the face of logic and common sense).

So…what do you think?

This is Picture A. ↑

This is Picture B.  ↑

And here is Picture C.  ↑

And here’s another pic of Holls, closer to the time the other pics were taken (Picture D), just to be sure.  ↑

Ok.  Vote away.

Anyway, my Pops is pretty awesome. I think I talk about my parents a lot. I seem to catch myself doing it often, and I’m sorry if that annoys people. I just really like them. It wasn’t always so rosy between us (high school), but if Ben and I can manage to be half the parents my parents were/are, Holland might not turn out so bad.

Either way, here is a sweet top 5 list regarding awesome things about my dad. And since I didn’t have this idea during Mother’s Day, one for the mom as well.

5 Rad Things About Andy Hicks

1. Dad’s full name is Adolphus Andrew Hicks the 4th. The first AAH was one of the first medical doctors to practice in what was then called Indian Territory (Oklahoma, or home state of Travis Hawkins, today).

2. Little Andy (as he is known to everyone that knows my grandfather, Big Andy) is a workout machine. He will kill you. I know, because he has killed me before. The man does 10 sit-ups every morning for as many years as he has been alive, PLUS a pretty intensive workout after that. That’s a whopping 510 sit-ups EVERY MORNING. To be frank, I’m not sure I’ve done 510 over the course of my entire life. He’s also a super awesome tennis player, frequently beating young, snooty Panhandle doctors and shaming them mercilessly. It’s pretty awesome.

3. Dad owned a pretty amazing full suit of armor when he was in college (and I think he still owned it when he and Moms got the married). He and his roommates named the suit Weird Harold, and would use him as a coat rack, and in December, a Christmas tree.

4. The Pops and his shady frat buddies thought it would be an awesome way to meet hot freshmen chicks if they waited to take their freshman Biology class until they were juniors. The story goes that Dad and SFB’s were sitting in the back & this “foxy freshman (Dad’s words, not mine) walked in. Dad said, “I’ll take that girl out on a date before the semester’s up.” SFB’s ribbed him and said there was no chance. And Foxy Freshman ended up being the Gwenster, and he did take her on a date, and the word is they got the married.

5. My last awesome tidbit about my Dad is how he proposed to my mom. Get ready: He put her ring IN HER SONIC DRINK. It’s so wondeful, it’s so perfect. Dad is also obsessed with buying food in bulk at Sam’s and every month when he stocks up, he picks her out some beautiful bulk flowers. If that’s not adorable, I don’t want to know what adorable is.

And that’s just scratching the surface. Really.

POST MOTHER’S DAY BONUS FEATURE!
And in honor of the Moms, a bonus tidbit:

My grandmother made my mother’s jeans for her until she was in college. My mom wore homemade jeans.

HOMEMADE JEANS!

So there you have it. The Gwandy is pretty awesome, even more awesome than this dumb list of 5 (and bonus feature) could possibly contain. Happy Father’s Day to all you dads, but especially to mine.