Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The holidays are upon us!

I have officially gone into panic mode. This weekend our middle daughter had her birthday party and the presents had to come home. Wow--that kid brought home quite a haul for such a small party! Trying to make room for her loot lead me to start chucking old toys while she was at school yesterday. Which led me to think of the upcoming holidays. There's no way on earth these kids are going to be able to stuff all the stuff they get this year into their room in it's current configuration. So I decided to clean out the place and re-arrange.
When I first got serious about weeding through their belongings I was rewarded with a potato. Yes, a potato. I'd found a red potato that had long been forgotten and had started to sprout in the bottom of their toybox. Undeterred, I pressed onward. And emerged somewhat victorious: I got rid of a garbage bag full of random junk: old, used up notebooks, art "projects", broken toys, etc. I was also able to fill a garbage bag with old toys to be donated to a local charity AND a modest sized bag of clothing that they no longer need. Today is PART 2 of cleaning out their room.

I'm motivated by the sheer terror of the idea that the holidays are really only a week away for us. We leave to see my in-laws next week and we'll be "doing Christmas" with them on Black Friday. Good thing we got a van this fall, last year we weren't able to fit all of the presents in the car on the way home. My BIL brought most of the kids bounty back to our place on his way back up into VT.

Now we have school parties, little craft-a-longs and various activities that will be sure to send the kids home with goodie bags filled with *treasures*. Treasures that you have to wait for the kids to fall asleep before you can chuck them safely. By safely, I mean you either have to hie your tail on out to the garbage can in the dead cold of a winter night so the kids don't find it in the trash bin in the morning or you have to take my clever approach and cover their belongings with the baby's diapers--who really wants to see what's under that, right?

I've got a couple of venues available to me in the next few weeks to help pimp out my wares and maybe earn a little extra holiday cash (always welcome this time of year) AND I've got to get on board and start thinking about my folks. The each celebrate a birthday in December. My brother approached me two days ago and asked if I wanted to chip in to get my dad a TV for his December 2nd birthday. Sure, I'd LOVE to kick in for a new TV--I'm just not sure that I can! Ahhh, well, we'll just have to see what is in the cards I guess. :)

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