Well hello, my friends. I hope you have been making merry in the past few days. It has been so frigidly cold here, but I’m kind of glad – it gives me an excuse to be extremely lazy and slothful. Kids in their jammies into the afternoon? Well, why not? We’re not going anywhere in this weather, certainly. I myself have been oscillating between frantic bursts of activity and the inability to rouse myself off the couch, watching episode after episode of, un-festively enough, Breaking Bad.
Yesterday my husband left the house very early to purchase suits, ties, and dress shirts at Boxing Day prices. He came home two and a half hours later to a house completely devoid of Christmas decorations. It’s called Boxing Day for a reason, around here anyway. On December 24th I idly thought that I would keep the decorations up until the weekend at least; by 8:30 a.m. on the 26th I was sprinting up and down the stairs with boxes, cleaning all flat surfaces obsessively, fueled by a pot of non-boozy coffee. A therapist would have a field day with me and my clutter obsession. I couldn’t control the thousands of Lego pieces in various stages of building. I couldn’t control the piles and piles of chocolate and candy boxes festively and happily adorning my countertops. But dammit, I could take down the tree and all the decorations. Tree, you’re going down, bitch.
After all, four solid weeks of 24-hour-a-day festive spirit is probably good enough. Now that the house is clean, I am happily sinking into holiday sloth, reading my new pile of books and having heart palpitations during Netflix episodes of Breaking Bad while the children build Lego and play Wii and laugh hysterically about the board game that my brother gave them, “Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure”, wherein the worst thing that happens is that the bacon slice-shaped game pieces get sent to “Vegan Alley”.
The dog, though. The dog. Just when he had resigned himself to having a tree in the living room, he seemed to have a doggy nervous breakdown as I packed the ornaments back in their boxes. He followed me around sadly, worrisomely. The despair he felt when the living room was being put back to rights was nothing compared to Christmas morning despair, though. Even the doggy beef jerky I bought him did not make up for the Christmas morning paper chaos. The poor, long suffering dog. He couldn’t bring himself to step on the discarded piles of wrapping paper, yet he couldn’t stop moving either.
WHAT’S HAPPENING? IS IT THE APOCALYPSE?
Meanwhile, I am enjoying the winter break with the kids, contemplating the annual chocolate dilemma – which is better: gorging with abandon, or making them last by eating them at a conservative rate? – playing Just Dance on the Wii and immodestly announcing to the world that I am awesome at the California Gurrls routine, and cycling through all my new pajamas:
SNOOPY! Not pictured: the Miss Piggy motif pajamas, and the pink ones with hearts.
How has your holiday season been so far? Is your tree still up or should we split the therapist fees? Did you receive some nice gifts? Tell me all. xoxo
I would like to provide you with an informed analysis on the chocolate issue, but since I’ve never managed to do anything other than gorge with abandon on any box of chocolates I’ve ever received, I can provide no helpful insight as to the merits of making them last.
Our tree is still up, but it comes down this weekend because it’s dry as all get out at this point and needs to go. The only reason it’s still up is because the boy scouts don’t come to pick up trees until tomorrow.
Our tree’s only been up a week, so it’ll stay for a while longer. I got some great presents. My favourite is a set of Le Creuset mugs. So pretty.
We are a tree up on Dec. 1st and down on Jan. 1st kind of family. But, now that I have kids I kind of wish that I had taken it down on boxing day so that my boys would stop asking for more presents!
I have been tempted to watch Breaking Bad on Netflix but my husband and I decided to start the How I Met Your Mother series instead. Nothing like holiday time and nothing on tv to get you into a new tv series!
Kerrie
http://www.familyfoodandtravel.com