Day One Hundred and Forty-Five

Well, Christmas came and went.  I wanted to do all of the traditional things we do at Christmas, like making cookies for Santa, dressing up and having standing rib roast on Christmas Eve, etc., but my heart wasn't in it, and neither were the kids'.  They jumped at my suggestion that we spend the entire two days in pajamas watching Christmas movies and making pizza.  It was way less depressing that way, anyway.  The other snag was that most of their Christmas gifts didn't arrive, even though they had been ordered at the beginning of November.

Five Sad Stockings

What did come was there new pjs and robes.   And the girls were strangely excited to get patterned duct tape.  A quick run to the grocery store yielded subpar chocolates.  It really was the saddest pile of gifts, but my kids were amazing and excited to have robes and stupid duct tape.  They all made coupons for each other and had fun opening those and reading them to each other.  One from Olivia was, "I will do three favors for you.  Not including chores.  Expires February 1."

Robes and pjs!  Woohoo.

The worst part of Christmas day was reading my newsfeed that Mitch's embassy in Kabul had been attacked by the Taliban, and then not being able to reach him for hours.  Only Jack knew what was going on, because he could see that I was upset.  All was well, no one was hurt, but I'm going to rate Christmas 2013 a twoout of five stars, and only because the kids were such good sports about everything, including the Christmas dinner of BLTs I made, which they exclaimed were the best BLTs they had ever eaten. God, I love my kids.

Alas, a few days after Christmas, the mail finally arrived and the girls got their little iPad minis so they can Facetime in style with their Daddy.

They boys both got new guitars, but the best gift of all was the arrival of old friends from Seattle.  We had a wonderful time hanging with Sharon and her two amazing teenagers.  

After a relaxing visit, Sharon, her kids, and Jack headed to Rio for a week of fun in the sun.

And now you are all caught up and we are firmly into 2014, which promises to be a crazy year for us.  Jack has been accepted (early action) to Tulane University so far, and he is awaiting to hear from the other colleges he applied to. ONLY ONE MORE WEEK of vacation, and then the kids will be back in school, yo!  I know I suck at updates, but you can always catch me on Fridays over at my work blog, because I get paid to do that, so that one wins over this one, I'm afraid.   Cheers!