We are not the Smith's.

We are not even the Smiths, but that's the name I'll use in this post to get my point across.

Last year, I posted about the traditional ornament exchange between me & Chuck C.. At the time of that post I had not yet bought his ornament & he had not bought mine. We talked about it & decided since last year was our only Christmas as a family of 3 we would buy a personalized family ornament instead of exchanging with one another. We also decided that we would do the same thing this year as a family of 4. This year, we had not found an ornament that we liked at our mall so we decided to order one.

Stay with me here as we pretend my last name is Smith. I ordered our ornament to be personalized with each of our names, the year, & our last name. I ordered it to say "The Smiths". I received & replied to a confirmation email that this was correct. When the ornament arrived, my specifications & spellings were highlighted on my receipt. The highlighted receipt very definitely said, "The Smiths". The ornament, however, said...

"The Smith's".

Hmmm.

Do you see the difference?

I do.

And I will.

Every.single.time.I look at that ornament.

This is one of my pet peeves. Nobody, but nobody, makes as many grammatical & punctuation errors as I do. I know that. But (See? I started this sentence with a "but".) this is one thing that just drives me up the wall. Adding that little apostrophe turns our last name into a possessive word. What in the world are we possessing? Not a thing. And ACTUALLY, if we were possessing something it would be "The Smiths'". When it says, "The Smith's", it's like some guy named Smith is possessing something.

Can you see that this drives me crazy??

BUT I will not change it.

I wanted to send it back for a new one.

I wanted to white out that stinkin' apostrophe.

Then, I decided I'd rather keep the memory...

The memory of "the freak out" when I opened that package, the rant at that moment, & the priceless look my husband gave me as he wondered where my "mute" button was.

I'll remember that.

Every.single.time.I look at that ornament.

And I'll laugh.

Because that's what we Smith's do.