Happy New Year Peeps! I hope everyone had a great holiday season. We did...sort of. If you've been following my blog - thanks to the tens of you- you know that nothing is ever easy here at Busy Momma's house. So, here is a look back at our holiday.
It started off really well. I mean REALLY well. Our annual Christmas tree hunt yielded us the perfect tree. I am looking at it as I type and darn it if it isn't the prettiest tree we've ever had. AND, as a bonus, both children selected it at the exact same moment! So we skipped the whole "you like her better than me because you picked her tree" dilemma that we have had every year.We even bought a new stand for our tree. The guy at the tree lot swore that it would be the best tree stand ever. And - it is really great. No bad words were said while putting the tree in the stand and then putting it up. The whole process took about 5 minutes - a miracle, no?
And it is in moments like this one that I really need to learn to just appreciate the Christmas miracle and NOT say things like: "Hmmm - it looks great...except from over here where it really looks like it is tipping over." Now, you all know how patient PC is with me, seeing as I am still alive and not buried under a pile of leaves in a ditch. So he came to where I was standing, looked at the slightly crooked tree, and said: "Do you really want me to try to straighten it? It is really so slight and it looks perfect from every other view."
This was clearly a sign from God. God was saying: "Listen Busy Momma, Christmas is not about perfect, it is about the birth of our Lord and appreciating all of the gifts I have blessed you with."
So I said: "Yes, I would like you to just move it a skoosh to the left to make it straight." God was obviously whispering and I didn't hear him. For I have identified the moment that PC went to "straighten" the tree that everything just went to hell. Of course, as you would guess, trying to tilt the tree once in the new stand is a BIG No-No. Tree falls over.....onto PC. (And just as an FYI - Christmas trees are HEAVY! And your adrenaline does NOT pump so hard that you can just lift a tree with your bare hands all by yourself.) The good news is that we did rescue PC, the tree was no worse for wear and it looks great...and straight!
The following week brought bronchitis AND a weird virus to our happy little home. Bella came down with this awful Mono-like virus. She was achy all over, horrible sore throat but no fever. So she just had to ride it out. PC on the other hand came down with a nasty case of bronchitis and ended up missing our Christmas celebration with my brother and his family. Thankfully, he really started to feel better on Christmas Eve. He felt great Christmas day and the day after. The shivering started Sunday evening after being outside at the rainy Ravens game all day. The fever spiked sometime during the night. The barking cough started the next day along with the horrible body aches. Yep - hello FLU! And this wasn't a little case of the "Man-Flu" this was balls to the walls influenza.
Peeps - it was like CONTAGION over here. I was seriously thinking about asking Santa to throw an Ebola suit into the sleigh for me. I contained the patient, isolated him and put the fear of GOD into my children about coming anywhere NEAR him. So far, so good. He is up and moving, but he was sick for days on end.
So, what that lead to was a simple little Christmas. He was so sick before Christmas that he wasn't able to help me with anything. So, I didn't do nearly as much. He was bedridden the week after Christmas, so I couldn't really leave him. So, we did less and relaxed more. And guess what? It was the best Christmas holiday we have had in a very long time. (I would bet you that PC wouldn't agree.) We weren't RUNNING. We weren't RUSHING. And if it could not be purchased online - well - there is always next year. Now, don't get me wrong - I am not advocating bringing an infected monkey into your home to play with the kids the week after Thanksgiving. I don't want another Contagion Christmas. But I DO want another SIMPLIFIED Christmas. I didn't decorate every inch of the house, I had the kids do the majority of the cleaning while I cooked, the kids even helped wrap one another's gifts, AND thank the Lord, that Elf on the Shelf didn't visit us ONCE this year.
I am un-decorating tomorrow. I am resolving to look at everything I didn't put up this year and decide if it's worth keeping. We had a perfectly lovely holiday without it and no one missed it..so I think tomorrow will be a huge "purge" day for me as I make the kids "un-decorate" the tree. I hope that you had a healthy and happy Christmas and I wish you peace and simplicity for 2015!
