Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Back to Boring We Go

I always have mixed feelings about putting away all the Christmas decorations. On one hand, my postage stamp sized living room feels downright spacious after taking out 6 feet of Christmas tree. For a few weeks, the husband and I will marvel at all this new found space and how big the living room looks! Until we remember that it's always been this size and it's not that big of a deal.

The problem is, the magic is gone. The Christmas season brings fun and joy and wonder. And if you have kids, it doubles the sense of wonder because you get to see the world through new eyes again. There's Christmas movies, Christmas music, Christmas shopping, and Christmas cookies. There's parties and presents and the smell of fresh cut Christmas trees. There's snowmen decorations and Santa decorations and stockings hung by the chimney with care. (Or in our case, on the wall with those little 3M hook thingies.)

Once Christmas is over we just start looking forward to summer.....in six months.

We do get a small transitional moment in the form of New Year's Eve. A party, one last food free for all before you start your diet (like you do every year) and a celebration with family and friends. My in laws always make a big to do and have a game filled food fest and it's pretty spectacular. I figure if you're going to celebrate how fricken quickly time has gone by that year (and the older you get, the faster it goes) this is the way to do it. Food, booze, and (drunken?) pictionary. (That would explain some of the attempted drawings we've seen over the last few years!)

Unfortunately, the next day brings with it New Year's resolutions that we all know we're probably ditching by February 1st, more than likely a diet (ugh) to get those stubborn holiday pounds back off, and the frustration of writing the wrong year on everything for a month. Plus, possibly a hang over if you were playing drunken pictionary the night before.

So yes, I do miss the magic of Christmas. Until I remember that the new year brings new possibilities. New chances for friendships and gatherings and special moments with my children. (Not to mention a new child altogether! One I haven't screwed up yet! A blank slate, baby!) And if we're honest, it's really only January and February that we mope through. By the time March comes around we're already feverishly looking for signs of spring. We're in the home stretch. Spring, in all its muddy glory, is almost here!

So for all my fellow Moms (and Dads too!) who don't know how they're going to make it another 3 months with cooped up heathens who desperately need the chance to gallop in fields of wheat (or even just the back yard) and give them a much deserved breather, I say hang in there. Once the weather finally hits above the freezing point you can always send them out bundled up like a winter burrito and earn back a few precious minutes of sanity.