Christmas is over, finally

Marissa got back from her out-of-town trip yesterday, so we celebrated our holiday today.  I think Phoebe and Charlie were more excited that Marissa was home than they were to have presents.  Man, those kids sure know how to melt my heart.

I took a day and a half off of work, so we could all go to the airport, and so we had time to celebrate our holiday, which means that all of our sleep schedules and days are completely out of whack.  It's felt like Saturday for the past two days now.  So I guess that means I get, like, 3 Saturdays this week.  Happy Christmas to me!

Happy Holidays

Marissa is gone until the end of the month, but Santa came and brought a present for the littles to share.  Today seems very un-holidayish, probably because we're waiting to celebrate until Marissa comes home, but so far it's nice and relaxing.  And we have cookies.  Lots and lots of cookies.

I hope you're all having a wonderful, fabulous, amazing, fantastic and delightfully marvelous day.

Solstice

In keeping with the Solstice tradition from last year, we went on a walk and fed the birds (thoroughly freezing our butts off), read Mother Winter from Circle Round (I love this book), and made gingerbread graham cracker houses.  The girls also each got a star lantern to hang in their rooms -- I think I need one.  Or four.

I'm kind of looking forward for the holidays to be over, though, so I can get back to my regularly scheduled napping.  Because, you know, I'm lazy like that.

holidays

Such a busy time of year, and busier this year because we're all sick.  Bleh.  We've been working on baking (chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, turtles, fudge, banana bread, nothing fancy), making trees and flowers out of magazines, and printing out our cards.

I highly recommend making the magazine trees -- they're addictive.  Like crack.  Check out the easy peasy instructions here.

Halloween

Our town does a Halloween parade every year, which is surprising given the religious nature of the community, but whatever.  We loved it.

This year, the town decided not to do a parade for "safety reasons."  Yeah.  I'm 100% sure it had more to do with some religious zealot getting their underpants in a wad, but the decision was made, and there was nothing we could do about it.  We called the school, and the principal dodged our calls.  Like that.

The benefit to living in a small town, though, is that you hear things, and you run into people.  I ran into the mother of one of Marissa's friends while shopping the other day.  She told me that there was a group of mothers who were planning to take their kids out of school on Halloween to do their own damn parade.  I smiled so hard I thought my face would crack, and told her to count us in.

There was a huge turnout -- I wasn't expecting so many kids.  Tons of people lined up on the street to check out the costumes and wave and cheer them on, and a few officers blocked traffic for the kids to cross streets and such.  After the parade we went to the Municipal building and the kids had pizza, chips, cupcakes, cookies, ice cream, candy, soda -- you name it.  All provided for free, from parent volunteers, who put the whole thing together at the last minute.

I have to say that as much as this place disappoints me sometimes, other times it rocks my damn socks off.

click to view our whole Halloween extravaganza