The Last Elf Standing

Santa is a busy guy.  He spends all year bustin' his red hump and then on his one day off he whirls around the world dropping off all it.  So I can't really complain if I have to put in a little effort in the red zone to pull off something amazing.  Every parent has that story. The bicycle with two missing gears at 12:30am.  The life size robot and no AA batteries.  My story involves a four story, Soho towne home that looked really easy in box at Costco.  Not so much spread across the floor at 11:30 Christmas Eve.  It was like some designer at IKEA went off on a weekend bender and designed a Barbie doll house.  It was classic "allen wrench only" situation with color coded screws that had no bit and undersized, predilled holes.  The instructions went way off the normal base of having them printed vaguely in fifteen different languages, opting instead to print them in no languages at all.  Just poorly drawn pictures from about 30 yards away so you couldn't tell what shape each piece was let alone how big  Then they had the instructions printed out of order.  Steps 1 - 4 on page one, 5-8 on page 27.  9 - 12 came in somewhere about page 5 and then jumped back to 2 for 13-16.  You can see how this pattern played out.  I'm pretty sure I put in every screw at least twice (having to undo them all at various points because this was on backward, upside down or not at all).  Then, somewhere around midnight, my Mother-in-Law says "that looks great. ... but how are you going to get those back panels in there?"  SHHHHIIIIIIITTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!  Fortunatly we were able to half way back track while my wife's uncle held the frame in place so we could slide out just a few screws and slip the panels back in.  The rest of the house went to bed while we soldiered on.  We finally finished the house around 1 and started in on the furniture when around 1:30 the girls bedroom door suddenly flew open and we froze in horror as Arianna stared at us through sleepy eyes.  "I need to go tissa (pee)!!!!!"  Gina ran to intercept, I quickly turned out all the lights and we seem to have avoided any questions.  She went back to bed and we went back to our miniature furniture restoration.  By about 2AM we were finally in bed, the penthouse apartment was securely constructed, the mini piano was tuned and the tiny toilet was flushing properly.  I went to bed with visions of dancing little girls geeking out over such a great gift in my head.  Then, on Christmas morning, all the girls decided to sleep in.