This week, Jason and I are not working - the University shuts down over the holidays. Yay! While we could take advantage of this situation to spend more time with the kids, the fact is that our house is in DIRE need of cleaning/straightening, and frankly, we are in dire need of some alone time.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday - the kidlets are in daycare, and we, the parents, are not at work. YAHOO!

Ok, so Tuesday - highly productive with Jason's help. All of Stephen's too-small clothes have been boxed up. The change table has been removed. His new-to-him dresser is now in his soon-to-be-his* room. The pile of crap that was 1.5 feet high that was located on my sewing machine has now been removed and relocated to garbage/filing/storage as appropriate. The 1 foot pile of crap on my desk has been completely cleared. I have purged. I have sorted. I have cleaned. I am having a major allergy reaction from all the dust, but I don't care, because IT FEELS SO GOOD TO RECLAIM MY HOUSE! MUAHAHAHAHA!

Still to be done: Creative Memories stuff, closets, box Alex's clothes, filing, basement, garage.

*Currently, the cat's food, litter, and the computer room are occupying Stephen's room. This is because the upstairs cat won't integrate with the downstairs cats. Until she dies, Stephen's room is not fit for him to sleep in, and thus will remain a computer room.

First of all, it was a great Christmas. It was just that it was a bit of a gong show.

The kids had a fantastic time opening their presents, and they got some pretty good loot. As did I :)

I think the thing that happened that snapped me out of my grinch-like state (previously posted), was when we woke up and looked into our stockings. The kids were thrilled with everything they got. Jason was pleased to see stuff in his stocking, and happy with what he got. My stocking was empty. Santa had apparently forgotten my stocking. I was feeling sorry for myself when my daughter noticed that my stocking was empty.

My three-year-old daughter, Alex, asked, "Oh no, Santa forgot about mommy?" And then she shocked us all. She went behind the toy chest, took the orange out of her stocking, and put it in mine. Then she brought it over to me and said in this excited and dramatic voice, "Look mom! Look what Santa brought you!" I have never been so proud of that little girl. In one minute, she really reminded me what the spirit of Christmas was all about. I think I started crying right then and there.

The rest of the day was spent playing with toys, and trying to keep rested so we could go to my mom's house for dinner. Stephen single-handedly undecorated the tree, periodically finding one of us and handing us a Christmas ball, saying, "Here you go." I spent the afternoon showing Alex how to play with Lite-Bright, and generally spending a lot of one on one time with her. As we were getting ready to go to my mom's, I left the kids alone playing for maybe 10 minutes. That was long enough. "It's awfully quiet down there," Jason muttered, and he went to check on them.

Alex had taken her toddler chair, put it up against the fridge, balanced on the back of the chair, opened the freezer door, and used that as leverage to pull herself up to standing on top of the fridge. This allowed her access to the candy cupboard - the one it takes me a step-ladder to reach. There she had pulled down all kinds of goodies.

Now she's done this before, and she's had many warnings that she was not to do it again. If she did do it again, then we would take whatever candy she had found away from her, and we would throw it in the garbage. So it wasn't a complete surprise that she'd done this. What was a surprise, was that this time, in addition to her usual package of candy, she also took out our container of chocolate covered coffee beans. There had been about 15-20 left. They were gone.

We went to my mom's because we were already late, but when I got there, I called poison control, just in case. I usually start feeling the effects after about 6 beans - she had 15-20. I didn't think she was in a huge amount of danger, but better to be safe than sorry.

After monitoring her behaviour for several hours (after some advice and a call-back from poison control), we determined that in fact, she probably hadn't eaten ANY of the coffee beans - but that she'd probably just hidden them somewhere to be eaten for a snack at a later date.

Which means we had to find them. We couldn't. We can only assume she ate them and they did not affect her (or maybe that was one of the nights when she was acting all crazy and wouldn't fall asleep? Unfortunately that's just normal for us, so there's no easy way to tell).

So yeah, it was quite the Christmas. Good times were had by all!

How was yours?

I'm having a bit of a grinchy day.

Let's hope it passes before Christmas morning. I'd post about it, but I'd rather not relive it at this point.

I think I will feel better once I get my house cleaned up for the festivities tomorrow. Go go gadget cleaning crew!

Merry Christmas to all you out there!

So what are you doing this holiday season?