Merry 6 Days After Christmas!!

(I started this post on the day after Christmas. I managed to finally finish it today - the 31st.)

I hope your holiday was as wonderful as ours was. Christmas is nothing short of chaos in our family. It starts early, and it doesn't end until close to New Year's. Ridiculous if you ask me, but that's the way it's been since we had kids. We break the holiday into rounds...

Round 1: Presents from Gram and Gramps in Florida start arriving the week before Christmas. I make the kids (and myself) wait until the last box arrives, and then Jon and I let the kids dig in. This year, they had to wait until Monday evening.

Round 2: Christmas Eve with Jon's family. Ummmm...insanity is the only word to describe the scene at his parent's house. The kids are allowed to ransack the place. And they do a great job. There is no rhyme or reason to the opening of gifts. Jon's Mom hands out the gifts, and the kids start ripping. I have no idea who gave them what. But they were so happy that I really don't care.

Round 3: Christmas morning with my Mom. We are much more organized here. The kids have to wait turns and show everyone what they got. They were so excited to see if Santa ate the cookies they left out. Everyone got lots of good loot, and the kids were so good that I wondered aloud if they were mine!

Round 4: Christmas afternoon with Zak and Trisha. The kids got to open their presents right before they went up for naps. When they came back downstairs, they were excited all over again to see that their presents were still here.

Round 5: Day after Christmas with Devin, Andrea, and their girls. The kids were once again enraptured by the amount of loot they received. Holy crap...we now have more Barbie, babies, and coloring stuff than any one family needs.

Round 6: Our Christmas at our house. Since we aren't home over Christmas, Santa stops twice - here (to leave the BIG things), and at my Mom's (to leave the semi-big things). All three kids were excited to see the piles of presents...again. Gabe and Elliott ripped open their stuff in record time...again. I think Janna was all presented-out. She wanted nothing to do with opening (at my Mom's she kept opening everyone else's gifts), and after the mess what cleared away she took a nap. The kids were awesomely good for the rest of the day. They played and played. I got a chance to rearrange their rooms to make all of their new stuff fit. I also got them to agree to giving some of their old toys away.

So, Christmas is finally over. And I'm grateful. While it was lots of fun, it was also nothing short of chaos. And chaos and I don't get along well.

I didn't post an actual "Weekly Weigh-In" for the week. Even with all of the cookies and pie that I ate, I didn't gain any weight over the holiday. I also didn't lose any, but I'm thrilled that I'm holding steady at 50.8 pounds lost!