It was a merry Christmas!

As my husband left for work this morning, he asked me to do one thing: blog. I really don't have a story to tell. So here are some random things:

We had a great Christmas. There was a lot packed into the 48 hours of Dec 24 and Dec 25. The biggest snafu I made was forgetting to buy potatoes for my assignment for Christmas dinner, so I just brought potato pearls. No one complained to my face.

My kids got a lot of presents. But then again, having a lot of kids automatically translates into a lot of presents. They have a few more Wii games, some outdoor balls, and Paul Ivan now fulfills the Boy Scout motto: he's prepared! I told him that if we ever have an emergency evacuation, his job is to grab his camping backpack and I'll get the 72 hour kits. He's now got all the essentials for camping (tent, backpack) and some not-so-essentials (camping shovel, chair, multi-use tool thingy). He also got a lot of knives. Parents, grandparents, and aunts should have coordinated a little more on this one. At least now if he loses one, or two, or three of them, he will still have another. Oh, did I mention the bow and arrow? So far, he's obliterated a cardboard box, jumped the fence to retrieve an arrow from our neighbor's, had to get his Grandpa to knock an arrow out of the top of a tree, and of course he's already split an arrow in half. The bow only came with two arrows, so the inevitable question came: how much do arrows cost?

I'm reading a book called "Confessions of a Slacker Mom." The second chapter is about toys. I agree with the author whole-heartedly. The third chapter is about scrapbooking, and I don't agree with everything she says there, but she's right on with the toys. She says there is an inverse relationship between quantity and value. The more toys a kid has, the less value each individual toy has to the child. They also take less care of their toys because they know there is always another one at the bottom of the toy box. If you want to read it, you can have the book after I'm finished. But remember I said I don't agree with the scrapbooking observations. Anyway...I watched Emma on Christmas Eve and she proved the author's point on the quantity versus value. We had a huge get-together with my dad's side of the family. There were a lot of gifts exchanged because there were a lot of people. Emma actually got annoyed at having to open so many gifts. She wanted to play with the toys she just opened--not stop and open another. It would have been better for her to just open a couple and play with them, than to open them all at once. In her three-year-old greedless innocence, she wanted to enjoy a few toys rather than be overwhelmed with many toys. Lessons to consider.

I'm having two friends over tomorrow morning and my house is a wreck. I try to live by the rule that everything in the house has a place. That huge bean bag still doesn't have a place and that is making life difficult in the playroom. Christmas toys come into the house in such rapid succession that it's a bit overwhelming to find proper places for it all. I think I'm going to have to buy the boys something to help them store all their new stuff. But anyway, my goal today, after my late morning shower, is to get this place cleaned up. And I'm going to start with vacuuming--which means I have to put all the toys away and put up the laundry I folded this morning, and...where am I going to start?

I've slacked on a couple of 'thank you's' this Christmas season. If you did something nice for me, and I didn't thank you, please know that it was on my mental to-do list that I lost. Procrastination is never my friend, but during the holidays, it is downright my enemy. If I procrastinate just a little, it translates into me never doing it. So, I'm sorry if I didn't recognize the many generous, kind gestures my friends and family did for me these last few weeks.

I think that's all the randomness I'll share with you today. I don't want to scare you with all my mind can come up with. I like people to think I'm normal. Have a great day and may all your return lines be short (you may see me at JCPenneys and Wal-Mart.)