Christmas Unwrapped

Since Christmas Day our house has looked as though a nuclear Christmas Bomb went off inside it.

Anyone who knows me very well will be tempted to shake her head and mutter bullshit ”yeah, right” under her breath, because they know how I typically keep house. Um, can you say OCD? But really, I swear. My life has been buried under a sea of gift wrap, garbage bags, game parts and cookie crumbs. Until yesterday. The garbage man finally came and took it all away and life can get Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming. Until Monday. When we take down the Christmas tree. Ack!

Now that the clutter has been temporarily removed from our home, and also my brain, I have had a little time to think about my favorite moments from the holiday. So here they are, in no particular order, some moments etched in my memory as special….

• the oven element going bad and having to be repaired to the tune of $240 dollars two days before Christmas and then rushing to make Christmas cookies, in an abbreviated form, so that we had some to leave for Santa since Allison practically had a heart attack when I suggested we use store bought ones
• watching Trent so carefully roll Peanut Butter Buckeyes into 42 different sizes and sprinkle sugar on the sugar cookies, and after telling him what a great job he did, watching him beam
• hearing my two year old nephew, Ryan, say my name clearly for the first time in the most incredibly adorable little voice ever
• listening to the kids beg Brett to save the life of the lobster, which they lovingly named Henry, that he planned to use to make Lobster Bisque for Christmas Eve and hearing them complain for days that dad “killed Henry” when he boiled him anyway (yummy….)
• snuggling in bed on a very rainy Christmas Day after waking at quarter to six (involuntarily) to open the loot
• watching Trent and Allison pool their money together to buy “secret” gifts for me and Brett
• taking Trent shopping so he could buy a gift for Allison just from him, which turned out to be, in his words, ”a girl shirt” with a glittery heart on it and hearing him say that he picked it “because we love her, Mom”
• playing Christmas Bingo on Christmas Eve with our family and working very hard to be sure that the littlest among us definitely won at least once so no one would cry and then Trent bursting into tears because “Daddy didn’t win” and then finding him in his room three days later in tears because he “just had a remembery that Dad didn’t win Bingo on Christmas Eve”

Okay, can someone please tell me how to bottle up a five year old somehow so I can keep him that way forever??