Fa La La La La, pass me a Xanax!

Four family parties in five days, approximately 10 dozen Antipasto-kabobs, about 400 miles driven, countless packages wrapped and distributed, and a bazillion pine needles in the carpet later...the 2012 Christmas hustle-and-bustle is in the books! (I’m not going to even put a number to the amount of cookies that have been baked and consumed. It’s just too embarrassing!) 

My parents divorced when I was young and I married someone with divorced parents, so when it comes to the holiday gatherings we normally have to make the festivities span over a few days. Oh, and did I fail to mention that each of our parents have multiple siblings. Not like two or three…we’re talking like five or more! So these holiday gatherings, there’s nothing “small” (or quite) about them. It’s chaos in all its glory! You typically walk away from one of these gathering with a headache either from the noise or from the amount of alcohol consumed. But I wouldn’t change it for the world! It’s what we do every year and will continue to do so in the years to come.

My kids are extremely fortunate because they end up opening presents for about four days straight. If you were to walk into our house right now and take a look under our tree you would think that Toys R Us threw up all over the place. I have several cardboard paper cuts on my hands from all the boxes I’ve been opening, but it’s all good! When did the packaging get so difficult that you need an engineering degree to get a Barbie Doll out of the box? As I sit here now writing this post, the two small kids and the big one (er, I mean my husband) are sprawled out on the family room floor playing with the new K’Nex set. In the past few hours we’ve played in the Dora tent/ball pit, made a few Color Splasher necklaces, broke out the Shrinky Dink maker, and played Barbies. Who knows what’s in store for tomorrow!

The only thing missing this year was a really great guy who I know has been looking down from above on all of us over the past several days. He would have been the ONLY one quite and composed as the chaos around him was in full force! Hahaha!

Happy holidays to all of you! I hope you experienced as much happy and joy as I did!