It’s the holidays and here at our house we are excited! I feel like this time of year every house in America has their own “Clark Griswold Family” version raging inside. Crazy is the new normal and our house is no different…
MOM
I am baking and continuing to add decorations here and there to keep everyone excited that Christmas is only days away. I think I might be on a bit of a Yuletide high…if there is such a thing (actually I’m pretty sure there is…I’m living proof!!) I’ve insisted upon taking the kids for hot chocolate and then Christmas light gazing around town. We’ve read Christmas stories by candle and Christmas tree lights in the evening. Thanks to the ABC Family channel, I have made sure we watch the scheduled Christmas movie every night since Friday. Even today, as we go about our final errand running, I plan on having the kids wear their Santa hats! I know I need help and I don’t even care!!
DAD
Our very own “in-house-Scrooge” – bah-humbugging everything but the food. (Honestly, I shouldn’t be so hard on the guy. He very patiently drove us to many Christmas lit neighborhoods AND as a bonus he even drove slowly for us…unlike previous years where he drove as if in a NASCAR race). He has sat through every crazy Christmas movie and humors me with phrases like “so what do we have here?” when he comes upon my newest idea/creation….instead of “what the heck is this?!” I thank God his patience grows with me the longer we are married. He even told the boys this year he gets sad when we take the Christmas decorations down. Someone has to keep their sanity during this time of year and at our house we have this man to ground us.
THE PEESTERS (our 9 year old)
Excited sometimes at the Christmasy ideas his lunatic mother has…other times he warps into this pre-teen version of himself giving me nightmares about the coming future. Many things he still approaches with child-like excitement…but has to make sure his father and I both know he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus so we need not pretend for him anymore. He did make my heart sing for joy as he asked the other night, “Mom, we’re still going to go to the Christmas Eve service at church, right? I love going there and then coming home to your soup.” (A little tradition we started after moving back to Nebraska 8 years ago – we go to our church’s Christmas eve service and then come back home to a soup dinner. Nothing big at all really, and I find it amusing he is so excited about the soup dinner since he rarely eats it!)
JUNIOR (our 7 year old)
Our youngest seems to be so buzzed on sugary treats that I think it could be July before he gets it out of his system! The Energizer Bunny doesn’t have nothin’ on this kid…except maybe an “off” button.
As much as I like joking about all of this – I love it!! I love the crazy, cranky, over-the-top madness of it all! I hope you and your family will enjoy this Christmas season as well this year. Merry Christmas from our house to yours!