[Editor's note: As you can see, that little Monty devil is gone. He kept whining, "I caaan't do a column every week." His column will appear again next week.]

I just mailed the last of my Christmas presents today.

I came up with the seemingly brilliant idea to send "Christmas" photos to my entire family this year. It's late, but they have to love me anyway.

My fiance (by the way, I hate that word, but they've yet to come up with an English equivalent) and I thought engagement pictures would be a great gift everyone would adore.

Actually, we thought it was a cheap and easy gift that everyone would adore. Well, it was neither.

It all started in October. (See, I had the intention of being on time.) One weekend we went home to Flagstaff, known for its beautiful autumn aspens.

"What a lovely backdrop for our photos!" we said.

Great idea, except the one yellow-leafed tree left in northern Arizona was 30 miles out of town.

So, in our good clothes, we trekked out into the wilds with my father/photographer. After a 45-minute search for the yellow tree, we proceeded to pose for 24 splendid pictures.

If my eyes weren't closed in one, his were. If his smile was nice, mine was crooked. If I wasn't squinting, slouching, making bug eyes or creating a second chin, he was.

Needless to say, it didn't turn out as planned. But that didn't stop us.

"Let's try again at Thanksgiving," we said. That never happened.

"Let's try again right before Christmas," we said. Yeah, right.

So I did the next best thing-sent Christmas cards. (Of course, in keeping with tradition, I sent them on Christmas Eve.) Each card held the promising message "gift coming soon" - "soon" meaning a month later.

We decided our odds at taking a satisfactory portrait were better in Tucson.

I left the Christmas tree up until January 15th, thinking everyone would be fooled into believing we took our "Christmas" pictures in front of our "Christmas" tree at "Christmas."

Twenty-four snapshots later, we achieved photographic success. But we wouldn't know it for a while.

While madly dismantling the tree and becoming increasingly anxious for the whole "giving" part of the holiday to end, I told my fiance to run the film to Albertson's for overnight developing.

He returned to inform me they didn't do 24-hour processing. It would be another five days.

What he didn't tell me is that he forgot how to read.

We returned the next Friday to pick up the film, in a hurry to meet some friends.

"I'm here to pick up some film for Amanda Hu -"

"Hunt," the clerk said, finishing my sentence. "It's tagged because it's been here so long. We have overnight processing, you know."

No, I didn't. My fiance chose to read the film pick-up dates written in fine print under "Kodak Deluxe Processing" rather than the pick-up times listed under the huge yellow letters, "Albertson's OVERNIGHT Processing."

As the lady in front of me filled out video cards for herself and the rest of the planet, the clerk suggested I go to the express lane.

I had to write a check, so I dashed to the "Checks/Cash, 10 items or less" lane. The clerk immediately ran away from her post.

"We're late. Just go in the 'cash only' line," my fiance suggested. "They won't care."

Five seconds later the whole store was in the "cash only" aisle.

I began writing my check and apologized to the clerk.

"You do realize you're in the '10 items or less, CASH ONLY' line," she told me.

"Yes, I'm sorry."

"Just thought I'd let you know for next time," she added.

Thanks. The next time it takes me three months to take one good picture I pick up five days late and 10 minutes before a dinner date to send to relatives who have been waiting four weeks for their "gift coming soon," I'll keep that in mind.

I just love Christmas.

Amanda Hunt is features editor for the Arizona Daily Wildcat. Her column appears every other Friday.