The Chicken vs. The Egg...what came first?

So I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I will share pics and stories of our great day later. Unfortunately for me, that great feeling seems to be all too far gone.

I'm in a bad mood. Our "winter break" is not turning out like I thought it would. I pictured days of waking up late, only getting dressed when we felt like it and having fun family filled days of going to lunch or movies or shopping and just hanging out AS A FAMILY.

K has been pretty much MIA and that is bringing me down. The kids are fighting constantly over their new presents and it starts as soon as they wake up and keeps going pretty much until they go to bed. Little T is just walking around amongst the chaos crying.

I know as a mother I can have a big effect on the general feeling in our home. As the saying goes, if mama ain't happy...no one is happy.

But what I'm trying to figure out is this...what came first? My bad mood so my kids are just following my example or did they start fighting and now I'm in a bad mood after days of listening to them.

We could leave the house. I have several items to go and exchange at stores around town. But does standing in return lines at stores with four kids sound like fun to anyone? Or does going to lunch or a movie with four kids by myself sound like fun???

And that is why we are still here. This is why I'm slipping farther and farther into the bad place. I'm losing any desire to do anything and be with anyone. When my husband actually does come home, I'm thinking he might just run for the door again!

Happy. New. Year.

Brown Family Christmas Weekend

We had my husband's family over this past weekend. It was our turn to host and so we all gathered here this year. Family started to arrive Friday night and the last of them left Monday morning. We had great grandma, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandma and grandpa. We finally had a real family portrait taken (it's been almost 10 years!) We decorated cookies, we ate and ate some more, we did a live nativity with every blanket and sheet we could find in the house, we had our town Santa show up to our driveway with candy on a fire truck (that one I can't take credit for...just good timing!) We exchanged gifts and had a Mexican fiesta for dinner. We had two fires going, two trees decorated...it was all very magical. When the photographer walked around our house that day, she said it looked like a hallmark card. It was. Thanks for making it great Brown family! It was wonderful to have you all! Hope this weekend is wonderful for everyone!


P.S. About this coming weekend...because we did so much to prepare for this last weekend, I was thinking that this weekend of actual Christmas would be a piece of cake. But here it is the Tuesday before Christmas, and I have ALL our presents to wrap, food to make, house to clean, errands to run, and really...I should have this all done today. Why you ask? Cause they are coming...yep...the children are coming tomorrow. School is out as of 3:30pm today until January 3rd. (C will be so happy!) But it makes it MUCH more difficult to get anything done around here and especially the sneaky Christmas stuff! And unfortunately I don't have it in me today. I'm just in a tired blah non Christmasy mood and my cute little T won't stop saying "Mom!" today and I'm losing my mind........ so dear Christmas..if we could perhaps put you on hold until I can take a nap and catch my breath I would appreciate it....thanks!

C is done....

So my five year old has determined that he is done with school. Yep..just done with doing the work, getting up so early...done done done. Yesterday he came home and only had 2 spots on his ladybug. Basically that means he was misbehaving cause he should have 3 spots at the end of every day. When I asked him what happened he said his friend had a big puffy coat on and C wanted to see if his friend would be able to feel a punch through the big puffy coat. Um..apparently his friend felt the punch and told the teacher. Awesome.

C was sent to his room yesterday for a good long while and had to explain to his dad what he did. They had a nice little chat and I thought we were good for awhile. He kept saying that he didn't want to go back to school though. When I asked him if anything bad happened he said no but that he was tired of doing all the work. Um yea kid...aren't we all!

I tried to give him hope as I told him that he had a long Christmas break coming up next week. He didn't seem too encouraged by this though.

Today, C came home and once again had lost his spot. When I asked him what happened this time, he said " I told you I didn't want to go back to school anymore". Oh brother it's gonna be a long year. Apparently he and some of his friends were playing when they should have been doing their work and all lost their spots.

The hard thing is...I don't blame him. He is five and leaves every morning at 7:45a and doesn't get home until 4pm and then has homework. It's a bit much.

And now just as I'm writing this post he came in my room and said " Um, mom I just want a couple of fairies that would let me do whatever I wanted."

Well C...I think we all do...yep we all want some fairies....

Our real tree

I know my family bought real trees at some point in my life but I don't think I have had a real tree since I was at least six years old or more. For a long time I didn't really get why people wanted real ones. Seemed like a serious hassle when a perfectly fake one did the trick.

For some reason this year is different. We put our fake one up like always. Looks nice and little T shouts "look..Christmas!" every time she sees it..or any decoration for that matter. But we are hosting the Brown family Christmas weekend this year so we wanted to make it more special.

This past Monday, we got in the car and headed to one of the several Christmas Tree Farms by our house. I don't know why but I was like a kid in a candy store. I felt like I was living out a Christmas Hallmark special. We ran from isle to isle filled the the scent of evergreens in our noses. T kept yelling "Candy cans" because all the rows of trees were lined with big things in the shaped of candy cans. It was all very festive.

I have always seen cars with trees on the top of them. Always wondered if those people in the car were all excited to take their perfectly picked tree home.
I honestly couldn't believe I was finally going to be one of those cars. I think my oldest thought my excitement was a little ridiculous but I seriously was so excited.

We got it home, put lights and homemade ornaments on it just in time for the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. It was a great night and I don't think we can just have one tree ever again.

My husband asked me the other night why things always seemed harder around the holidays. And keep in mind, he has had a crazy amount of things on his plate and is driving to upstate New York as we speak for his grandma's funeral so I can totally understand where he is coming from. I told him that we do have more things scheduled this time of year but we also set our expectations ridiculously high this time of year. We want everything to be perfect. We don't think anything bad should happen from Thanksgiving to New Years and unfortunately that doesn't end up being realistic.

So I think that is why our family home evening night to get the tree felt so great. It was simple. It was just our little family. It wasn't perfect...the trees we really wanted were sold out, but it was okay and we had fun and it felt magical just for a moment.









































And can you tell my boys need new coats cause all their shirts are hanging outside of the coat arms! Good thing Christmas is around the corner, eh?