holiday recap

yes, i know that it's still the Christmas season, but after new year's it doesn't really feel like it to me. i wish we had wonderful traditions with our little family, somehow highlighting the 12 days of Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Family, Epiphany, etc, but we don't. so to me, this is the end of the Christmas season, and i can officially say that we survived.

after my whiney post about santa, i decided i could either be a grinch about Christmas or i could just do my best and roll with it. tim insisted that he wanted to do the santa thing, even pretending to call santa on his phone when ben was having a meltdown on Christmas Eve. i really had to bite my tongue, but i did. in fact, when tim fell asleep on Christmas eve when he was supposed to be helping me get everything ready, i was the one who placed their santa present under the tree and disposed of the santa snack. the boys were excited in the morning, but they really didn't make a big deal out of it and really didn't have much time to linger thinking about it because we needed to get out the door to Mass.

our Christmas miracle was that we made it to Mass ON TIME and the boys were mostly good. it was a wonderful gift to me.

after spending a fun Christmas Eve with my big family, we spent a relaxing Christmas morning with Tim's family. the boys got some really cool, thoughtful presents and we had such a nice time being with his smaller family. Christmas night was spent at a big gathering of tim's extended family, which was also a really nice time to catch up with some of his cousins that i hadn't seen in awhile.

by the time we finally made it home we were exhausted, but also filled with gratitude to be surrounded by so many wonderful people. if we were responsible adults who made good decisions, we would have went to bed, but instead we welcomed one of tim's oldest friends out to our house. since we hadn't seen him in a while and he was only in town for a very short visit, we didn't want to miss out on catching up with him.

the 26th brought another very fun but very exhausting night as we hosted a gathering of friends late into the night.

the rest of this last week has been a whirlwind of more wonderful people and not so delightful mornings, being woken by the boys far earlier than i would prefer.


we are so, so blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful people. for tim and i, the struggle is in how to balance our desires to socialize with our responsibilities and with the needs of our family and our wimpy, sleep needing bodies. i think if i could sleep for a week straight, or maybe all of january, i would feel recovered.