Ringing out Christmas!

Christmas went wonderfully well, however I know my kids.  I know if they looked at that big ole Santa mural in the dining room one more day, stared at the tree, or looked at any of the 5 bajillion decorations we had throughout the 11 rooms of the house, that we would slide rapidly from "wow what a WONDERFUL Christmas" into "why the heck are they acting like wild hooligans?"  Or wilder than usual hooligans.  Playing Santas workshop the week before Christmas is cute.  When it goes on after the holiday is over somehow it all gets frenetic and not so cool.  I can't put it into words well, which is tough when blogging but hopefully you will all trust to the veracity of the words.  At any rate, K had to work today, there was no dance class, the library was closed, and we de-Christmassed the house.  The kids were surprisingly into it.  I approached it by pointing out that if we got our tree down, that we could make a place space and the Dora kitchen and the Barbie doll house could return.  We did that and sorted toys and I took pictures of what goes where.  I plan on posting the pictures above the storage area for the toys so that in my little dream world the toys get put where they belong.   I fight this battle constantly.  I can never decide if I am being anal wanting things to be put away so that all the pieces are in the game and all the legos are together, or if I am allowing them to become slobs when I try and ignore it. 

I have decided I will try this for now as the old way wasn't really working.  I would try and ignore it, and assume that they had given their best effort.  Stuff was everywhere and then when they couldn't find what they needed, they made more of a mess looking for it.  So anyway, we did a boatload of cleaning.

Though the tree and all the Christmas decorations are down, things still look pretty and festive.  I have a big old snowman collection that decorates the cabinet tops in our kitchen through January.  We have 6 clear stars that we hung from our chandelier the beginning of December and I left those.  They look like they are carved from ice.  We have scratch art snow flakes on the dining room wall but the mural is down so that we can start making decorations for our New Years in Greece.  Things feel remarkably settled and there has been very little post holiday grumpiness.

Tomorrow weather permitting we visit my mom and celebrate with her and then in late January with my inlaws.  So there will still be celebrations and joy.

And one of my biggest joys?  Last night when I went to bed I found thank you notes there from my 2 eldest children for the handmade gifts we had given them.  All the other stuff is Santa at our house but they got their notes done pronto with no nagging.  Huge.