Okay, so lets be honest here. Who, in their right mind walks away from the November/December months riding on a blissful holiday high? That’s right. No one. I don’t care what kind of pious or abstinent life you lead, there is no way you can honestly look back at the previous two months and not want to be all, LATER DUDE! And its not even like I’m trying to get all Bah Humbug, and whine about the same inane things that everyone bemoans (I’m Broke! I’m Fat! I’m Hung Over!). I’m just sayin’. If the holidays ran year round we’d all be dead by the age of 7. (Throw in a couple holiday-adjacent birthdays and it automatically shortens to 5.)
This year was our rotation to host the holiday extravaganza, which meant it was up to us to make sure everyone was tended to and cared for so as to minimize the boredom, hurt feelings, foot pounding, over-stimulation and general dramatic flair. Oh, and make sure the kids were happy too. If I were to rank it on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being someone pitching the Christmas tree on the lawn in an egg-nog-fueled rage, and 10 being that we all shared in a group hug at the end, I’d say it was probably somewhere around 7 – being that no one cried in the presence of anyone else and everyone seems to still be on speaking terms with one another. I shall proclaim it victory.
It took a full-scale global recession for everyone to finally stick to their “we’re keeping it simple this year” proclamation, and although our kids were showered with gifts aplenty, we are – overall – getting much closer to a manageable scope of gift giving. At first glance, you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell, considering all 12 of us sat down to open gifts at the same time – then multiply that by 6 or so gifts per person, then multiply THAT by the fact that the kids had somewhat patiently waited all morning and until AFTER breakfast. If we had opted for the one-at-a-time gift opening method we would probably still be sitting there – and/or one of the kids may have exploded.
Somehow, we all managed to make it through.
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Because we are stupid can’t leave well enough alone, we had decided to undertake the task of moving the kids into separate bedrooms the first week of December – unleashing a project I am certain will never actually end. Currently, there are clothes piled on the floor, and framed pictures stacked in corners of every room. Now has come the realization that we don’t have ANY decent furniture for Porter’s bedroom other than his bed a giant toy pit toy box. We have set up a makeshift card table and I bought a lamp to, you know, make it look respectable. Other than that we are on a quest for a bookshelf. And as per usual, based on our findings so far, we are about as likely to find one locally as we are to get Porter to deviate his wardrobe. (I’m pretty sure he is eligible to set a world record for wearing the same outfit for the most consecutive days in a row.) Thankfully, as we began the rearranging process we were able to convince him that we could throw away the last of the contents of the diaper shelf and have successfully entered into 2010 without a single Pull-Up of any kind. Boo. Yah.
We are all now back at work and school, and Stella is now officially a 1st grader. The realizations of this shift continue to reveal themselves to us: Homework is no longer an activity, but rather a requirement. She won’t have an official 1st grade school picture. We need to begin saving quarters to make-up for the year we just lost in saving tuition. It wasn’t until the last moment that I realized that I had to actually prepare for this as another 1st day of school exercise. Let’s just say it wasn’t quite as big a production as it was the first time around. I managed to get a couple of photos, but that was about it.
By this point you have probably figured out that we have basically rolled into this year with our usual pomp and circumstance. Nothing is dire, but nothing is dull. There is a term they use in the clinical world of doorknob touchers where they either refer to someone as neurotypical or non-neurotypical. As you can imagine, we utilize these adjectives quite often around these parts. As such, I think I am going to coin my own household term by saying that overall, this season was pretty much Walston-Typical®
Those of us who were present at Christmas were honored by the attention to detail and blessed by our time together. All it needed to be a 10, we think, was Andy Williams singing with the little Osmond Brothers!