Ho, ho, ho! or Traditions are Fun

 

Yay! It’s almost Christmas… and I have the presents to prove it. They’re all stored in my bedroom.

I think they’re safe in there. It’s the one place in the whole house where the kids aren’t allowed to play. They go in only to grab their nooks (and they leave the light on every single time, which drives me nuts) or wake me up on the weekends, but it’s not a gathering place.

You know, I used to have this thought that it would be sweet to snuggle in bed and watch TV together, but in reality it’s mostly  pretty uncomfortable because everyone piles on top of me and then they all vie for the best spot… which is usually the spot my head is occupying. Then, and this is all just speculation on my part (is it still speculation if it's highly likely to happen?), a serious fight would break out over who should have "the best spot," and then there would be an argument over what to watch, and then one kid would want to play on their nook but would have forgotten to charge it, and then another kid would go and get their fully charged nook and comment on everything they're doing on it which would upset the owner of the not fully charged nook, then someone would want to eat breakfast, and then someone else would be upset because they want to cuddle more, then my newspaper would be crinkled and torn in all of the ruckus and everyone would be cranky... so, no, we don’t gather there and spend lazy Saturday mornings with me reading the paper in bed and the kids lounging around in their jammies next to me watching cartoons. Instead, we do our lounging in the living room where we can all spread out unless we want to cuddle. Like right now for example… I’m typing this while Jackson sits next to me, Katie next to him, and Jacob next to her. We’re squished onto two thirds of the couch. It’s cozy and no one has their feet in my face. Plus, it’s very warm. (If I didn’t have this laptop in my lap, I would try to convince Jacob to sit with me too… on the foot rest because 1. he likes to sit there, and 2. he keeps my legs warm when he sits on them.)

Oh, we had a really fun day last Saturday. Grammy had sugar cookies made and we got to go decorate them! (On a related note, I need to buy Grammy some decorating stuff because the kids dumped all of hers out while decorating their cookies.) It wasn’t too bad of a mess because we had them put their cookies into a dish before they dumped a ton of stuff on them. We brought our cookies home and I’ve been eating them all week. They turned out really good and I would say that next year Grammy should make the same recipe for the cookies and frosting. And then she should invite us over again to decorate them. This would be a great tradition. Are you reading this Grammy?

And finally, I’m starting to get excited about Christmas. We went to the Christmas service at church and there were Christmas decorations and Christmas songs and a really good pastor message and my mom went with us. Yay! AND I’ve got most of our presents bought. Now I just have to wrap them (while watching the Christmas movie marathons on Hallmark channel, of course... that seems to have become my tradition. Yes, Hallmark channel movies and running out of tape because, for some reason, I always think I have way more than I actually have, and I always expect to find a backup roll in the last place I remember seeing one… even though I used *that* tape up when I ran out the year before. Maybe I need to find new traditions, like Netflix and buying lots of tape in advance). I’m also excited because this year I planned ahead and bought stuff for their stockings instead of waiting till the last minute.


Okay, finally for real this time, Jacob is wearing a Santa hat. He’s worn it all day, since Grandpa gave it to him. He wore it while playing, he wore it while eating, he wore it at church… he’ll probably want to wear it to bed. Yes, he wore it to bed. I took it off of him and put it on one of his toys so he'll see it in the morning.