After Christmas

It seems as though it's been much more than two days since Christmas, and I guess that tells you what the time's been like. Lots of fun but also tiring. The boys got so many presents and we got so much snow -- 14 inches from about noon on Christmas until last night. All that snow meant that we were mostly housebound yesterday. I wrote Christmas cards, the boys played with their toys. Today we did get out for a bit, went sledding. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Backing up a bit...

The boys got up at 5:30 Christmas morning, a truly ungodly hour. I had no idea they knew how to get up that early! We had gone to bed around 1 am, so getting up at 5:30 did not feel possible, and instead we lay in bed listening to them exclaim over their stockings. Finally we dragged ourselves out to the living room and they opened all their other presents. Oh, the joy of a remote control helicopter!

After all their gifts were opened, Rocket Boy and I went back to bed. I know I wasn't supposed to do that -- I was supposed to fix a nourishing yet delightful Christmas breakfast -- but it was 6 am! We slept for several more hours, occasionally hearing happy murmurs from the awake portion of the family, and felt much better when we did get up.

The first order of business for both boys was assembling their new Lego sets.

I don't know what it is about Legos, but they seem to cry out to be put together IMMEDIATELY. So all the other presents had to wait their turns. Pretty much everything has gotten its turn by now, I think -- they've built their Magformer cars, made the puzzle, listened to each other's hearts (and butts) with the stethoscopes, played with Mr and Mrs Potato Head and the toy dog set, listened to me read all the new books, played with the train set, and done endless experiments with the electronics set. Am I forgetting anything? Oh, the remote control helicopter! While waiting for it to stop snowing, we managed to lose both the instructions and the box that the helicopter came in! We're going to mount a serious search for both tomorrow, because that thing cost 50 bucks and we can't figure out how to make it work. Nor can we return it if we can't find the box.

I spent Christmas night watching TV, not normally my favorite pastime. But the living room seemed so festive, and PBS was showing all sorts of holiday cooking shows and also murder mysteries. It was hard to resist. I felt very happy and content, despite the fact that I did not receive a single present! Have to work on that, maybe next year, but this year I just didn't care. The only thing I asked for was the new Laura Ingalls Wilder autobiography, which isn't available for love or money, so Rocket Boy ordered it and I'll get it in January.

Today we managed to drag the kids out to a restaurant for lunch -- we have a house full of food, but we needed a change of scene. Then we swung by our house to pick up the sleds (a second red sled mysteriously appeared on the porch a few days before Christmas, so now we have two red sleds and the blue saucer) and headed out to our favorite sliding hill.

When we arrived, there were approximately 50 million people on the hill, but the crowds thinned out quickly, as the sun was starting to go down (it was about 3:30 pm). Still, there were enough other people out there that crashes were a real concern. Kid A did manage to smash into a little girl's sled, but no one was injured. He was having kind of a cranky day, though, too much sugar and too many new toys, and he told me, angrily, "This is the worst day ever! I crashed into someone and I keep dropping my glove!"

It was not really that cold -- about 32 degrees when we left home -- but the temperature was dropping as we were out there. As soon as someone complained about the cold, I said "Would you like to go home?" and they said "Yes!" so we went, with no arguing. It's always best to leave while you're still having fun. We might go out again tomorrow, because it's supposed to be in the 30s again. Tomorrow night the snow returns, and our predicted high on Monday is 11, Tuesday 5, so those won't be sledding days. We might go to a movie or a museum. Or just camp out in our cozy little house, playing with toys.

And now I must go to bed -- I'm thinking I might read The Long Winter, in honor of LIW and also just to remind myself of how lucky I am.