Holiday Stress Test

First of all let me apologize for not posting the past few days. The holidays have taken over at our household and I find my discretionary time to be at a minimum. There are are Christmas cards to get out, shopping to be done and mastering og multiplication tables to be completed.

Huh?

The point is, that on top of all the extra activities that the holidays bring on we still need to focus on the mundane things that normally eat up our time. My current challenge is help my nine year old daughter master her multiplication tables. We are employing a variety of strategies and having limited success. Does anyone know of a good software program for kids that could help here?

Anyway, on top of all the normal chaos that comes with the holiday season, I had the added fun of putting up a Christmas tree twice. I came home early the other day hoping to get some work done before I had to go meet Morgan at the bus stop. I came in, let the dogs out and was heading back out to my car when I heard a very loud CRASH. It was a glass breaking crash sound.

Sure enough, my ten foot Christmas tree which had stood steadily for three days suddenly decided to give into an unseen indoor wind and toppled over onto the hardwood floors in the foyer. Broken ornaments littered the area, so much for getting any work done that day. For the next few hours I cleaned up the mess, moved the tree back out to the garage and removed the tangled morass of lights while Mama Wordbones cleaned up the water and pine sap that remained behind.

The thing is, I didn’t let it stress me too much. Sure, at first I was angry but then who was really angry with except me?

I certainly couldn’t blame Mama Wordbones. In our house we actually have two Christmas trees because years ago Mama Wordbones decided that a real tree was just much dam trouble. She now happily unpacks her fake tree and places in the living room while I still go the traditional route with a live tree in the family room. If anything I was extremely grateful that Mama Wordbones helped me at all. She could have easily retreated to her fake tree in the living room and sipped a hot cocoa while I slaved away at cleaning up my natural disaster.

But this is Christmas after all and in the spirit of the holidays she pitched in and helped me reconstruct my tree. It is now back up, complete with a new tie back to the wall behind it (Mama Wordbones suggestion) and some ornaments that look like they came from the Island of Misfit Toys.