Christmas- I Have to do What? By When??

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

A discourse on why no one received Christmas cards from our family.

I loved Christmas as a kid.  The excitement of Santa, who always left a large, UNWRAPPED (I could devote a whole post to that discussion in the Wakley household) gift.  The delicious foods for every meal.  The pretty decorations.  But as an adult I'm finding that I don't like it enough to outweigh how much WORK it is.  I just want to show up to the party, you know?  Now that we're "all growed up", there is no party unless we make it.  Fortunately, Darrell loves to decorate for Christmas or we'd be lucky to have a wreath on the door and a tree in the living room.  And we all know I'm not going to go hungry anytime soon, so I can talk myself into cooking special (read- time consuming, expensive and messy) foods for holiday gatherings.  But this was the first year that Santa really visited our house when Duke was expecting him and wow it was exhausting! 

Besides the normal everyday tasks of life, like prepping my children to live and flourish in this big bad world, getting dishes clean, clothes folded, dog hair under control, and on and on, plus the added tasks of holiday time like decorating, I now have to find time to go to stores without them, purchase gifts that I have to hide from them, wrap said gifts, assemble said gifts and so forth.  We also had our largest Annual Tea Party yet, with 120 invitees and 46 attending.  Planning, doing invites, labels, baking, cleaning (special thanks to my mom and sister!)- whew!  And lots of those ladies bring gifts, which they really don't need to, and I feel compelled to write thank you notes for each one.  22 thanks you notes can take a really long time to write.

Once we made it through all that, it was a great day.  Duke had so much fun.  Once again he really got into the Santa thing right about when it was over.  We thought he might spontaneously combust when he saw his bike- covered in sea creatures no less!, but he was kind of blase' about it.  Now though he gets really excited telling people "Santa brought me my bike!"  He didn't want to learn to ride it at first, but I told him that when he gets good at pedaling we could ride to Nonni and Granps' house and that did the trick.  "What are we going to do at Nonni and Gramps'?" he wants to know.  Let's work on making it further than 6 inches, OK?  Baby steps.

My mom came over Sunday afternoon (the 27th) through the kitchen.  Duke hadn't heard her come in.  I told him that there was someone in the kitchen.  His response?  "(Big intake of breath) Santa's here?"

Speaking of parties (well, I was earlier in the post) I had a momentary lapse in judgment and considered having a New Year's Eve party.  Mind you, this thought came to me on Saturday the 26th of December.  However, that wasn't the reason I decided it would be crazy to have one.  It was because as I thought out the details I realized that I would want everyone to go home by 9:30, 10 at the absolute latest and that most people probably wouldn't be willing to do that.  So now I've come to my senses and am looking forward to (I hope) our first virtual party!  What a way to bring in 2010 but by celebrating technology, expensive gadgets and our total nerdiness!!