Our Journey to Africa: Christmas Blues

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Christmas Blues

So, I've been thinking back on the last month. It was a whirlwind of activity as December usually is. It was a very strange month for me....you see, I normally love the holidays. And Christmas....my favorite. I love the activities that I get to do with the kids, decorating gingerbread houses, making cookies, meal planning for the big event, shopping, wrapping....all of it, I love it! This year, we maybe started off on the wrong foot, the week before Thanksgiving, Big Sis had a slight case oh pneumonia :( yuk! Poor girl was downright miserable. So, the week of Thanksgiving didn't go as planned.....and, if you know me, Christmas starts promptly after the turkey is put away. OH YES! I get up at the crack of dawn with all the other crazies and head out on Black Friday to do some light shopping. Then I come home and we either head out to our favorite Christmas tree farm to pick out our tree, or, I have the hubby pull all 30 Christmas decoration boxes out of the attic (really, there aren't that many....well, maybe almost that many), or maybe we do both..... Either way, all of the above gets accomplished the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Except this year.

No, this year, dinner plans for turkey day were in limbo until Wednesday night, not fun for this hormonal mom.

Yes, I still did the o'dark 30, Black Friday fun, but this year I took care of the kiddos online on turkey day and then headed out to score some seriously cheap fabric for stuff for the baby. Uh, someone should have restrained me, because I couldn't use all this fabric if I sewed straight from now until March.

Yes, we did go get the family tree and the hubby did get all 28 ;) boxes out of the attic. But quite frankly, I could have done without it all. In fact, my family would tell you....half of the decorations stayed in the boxes through the next week (gasp!) and, some of the decorations never even made it out of the boxes (gasp!) and, my cute village (that I begrudgingly set up)

was never fully lit up!!!!!!

I know, it's terrible. It's quite unnerving to see it here in print. This has never happened to me.

Never.

So, I finally decided that I must have had a little Christmas blues, maybe triggered or helped on by the wonderful pregnancy hormones. Really, it was bad....

the Christmas tree was a measly 6 ft tall.....(for me, that's kinda short)

I didn't even get past the 2nd layer or ornaments (there's like 6 layers!).....

the Christmas village houses never had light.....

the cute extra lights for the village (like the sweet little lamp posts or twinkling Christmas tree), never even had batteries.....

pi-ti-full

Well, don't feel too bad for my family. We survived the holidays and there was plenty under the tree for the little ones to be happy. I also hand made all the presents for the extended family and we were surrounded by working, plugged in or battery powered Christmas decorations for the big event.....

because we went to my brother and sister-in-law's house for Christmas.

No, I am not redeemed, but at least we weren't looking at a dark village scene as we unpacked stockings and opened presents.

I did manage to kick it in gear for the cooking part and baked 2 batches or nut rolls, a pumpkin pie, and I helped out a ton for Christmas dinner.

Honestly, I'm glad it's over. I really, truly love Christmas time. I hope next year I am back to my old self decorating every flat surface that I can find and making a huge mess in the kitchen with the kiddos.

One awesome part of Christmas was that I got to see some family that I hadn't seen in a really long time. As extended families go...well, you know sometimes it can get messy. This visit wasn't, it was perfect with very little stress for this pregnant lady. So, a couple weeks later, here is my sweet family at Christmas....