Bah Humbug

I was doing fine Christmas spirit wise up until today. We had fun putting up the decorations, sending out the cards, shopping, and wrapping the gifts. The kids especially liked helping with the cards because of the stickers (aka. stamps & return address labels) and the gift wrapping because of the tape and scissors. Christmas is like one giant arts and crafts project. In fact, I marked it down as such on our home-schooling paperwork. But that's another blog for another day.

Anyway, so I've been fairly festive. I say fairly because that's really as festive as a mom who has to clean up garbage and poo all day gets. But then today I turned into Scrooge's mom, who of course was probably way worse than Scrooge and was to blame for his scrooginess. I can kind of pinpoint when it happened, too: right when the kids all woke up and started rummaging under the tree, asking me what was in each package, why certain packages were stuck together, why couldn't they wear shorts & t-shirts, why they had to wait until Christmas to open their gifts, why was it raining, and why, once again, couldn't they take off their sweatshirts.

Once they figured out from my answers that I was not the go-to person for these questions (brussel sprouts, I can see only brussel sprouts in the packages with my x-ray vision), they engaged in an epic war. Like all wars, this one was broken down into a gazillion smaller battles. The war is at a truce now, and the only casualty besides my ever dying brain cells was my Christmas spirit. Which is why I'm going to go out in the freezing rain and check the mailbox. It's the only time of the year that I actually do check the mailbox. The rest of the year, my mother-in-law brings it in after she notices 3 days' worth sticking out of the box.

P.S. Yay, we got 3 cards in the mail. The kids are now fighting over who gets to open them.