Oh, I want a hippopotamus for Christmas!

Happy Christmas Eve!

This is the first Christmas where I get to play Santa Claus, and I'm so excited!

Mike has been trying to get me to spill the beans on what I got him for Christmas since December began. Earlier this week, we had a conversation along the following lines:

Mike: (Innocently) You know, sometimes the way you wrap the present enhances the gift.

Me: (Not fooled) True.

Mike: So you could tell me something that you're giving me and I could tell you how it would best be wrapped.

Me: Hmmmm...nice try.

Mike: Well, just tell me a hypothetical gift then.

Me: OK, how about a hippopotamus?

Mike: Is this a real hippopotamus or a fake hippopotamus?

Me: It doesn't matter. It's hypothetical.

Mike: Oh, it matters. If it's a real one, I'd like it to come wrapped in a cage.

One of the things that Mike requested for Christmas was a new pair of temple pants. That's one of those things that the person really needs to be there to try on, so I devised a plan of cutting out a crude outline of a person (kind of like a gingerbread man) from felt then cutting out a pair of felt pants to represent that we'd go out and shop for his new temple pants after Christmas.

I tried freehanding a pattern to cut out and these are what I drew. Sadly, this represents my best effort:
I drew the one on the left first. The large size of its head disturbed me, so I drew the one on the right, which turned out looking like Gumby's special needs brother.

I figured I needed help with drawing an appropriate cut out, so I Googled something along the line of "male outline with pants" to give me a template to cut out. This came up:

Where to begin? There are so many things wrong with this. The skin-tight tie-dyed wife beater, the yellow combat boots paired with the Speedo, the purple capris. And is that thing on the lower right a fanny pack?? What the heck is this?!? Why the heck is this ?!? I thought about it for awhile, and I think I have the answer to the first question. He's a warrior rapper, with the apron and kitchen gadgetry meant to represent his sensitive side. As for the "why," some questions are better left unanswered.

Anyway, I'm ditching the idea for temple pants. I got him some other things for Christmas tomorrow and I think we'll just go ahead and get the temple pants the next time we find ourselves in Utah.

In the meantime, we're going to have fun at Mike's family's Christmas party and enjoy our first Christmas as a married couple!