The Week in Between

Well, we’re most of the way through the longest week of the year. 

Last week, schools released their captives hyped up on candy and Christmas dreams, anxious to be done with the last days leading up to the big event. My boys practically bounced out to the car last Thursday, their arms full of toys from their teachers. They had celebrated at school, and they were ready to party at home too.

The only problem was that we still had 10 long days until Christmas.

Why, oh why, don’t they just let school out on December 22 and give the kids two weeks off after that? We’d start the break off with the big event, the kids would have plenty to occupy themselves for the next two weeks, and I would only have to answer the “Is today Christmas?” question twice before it actually was. I can only assume that school boards worldwide hate parents.

And they wonder why Christmas songs get turned into mean songs about teachers and schools.

“Joy to the world, the teacher’s dead...”

“Deck the halls with gasoline...”

Am I the only one who learned these as a child?

No child is clever enough to come up with these on their own. I suspect parents were involved. But not my parents, of course.

I digress. I was going to tell you how I’ve been keeping my little hooligans, I mean, darling children, entertained during the week in between.

We’ve been hanging out at Sea World where amazingly enough, they can make it snow in San Diego on a beautiful, sunny, 60 degree day. Don’t hate me.  I'm suffering here.

Two of my children played happily in the snow until, imagine this, their hands got wet!  And then their hands got cold! 

 

Andrew stripped off his jacket and tried to run away.

Jacob and Benjy went sledding for the first time in their lives, and then demanded to know why they'd never done it before.  I reminded them that snow is cold.  They nodded in silent agreement.

Notice the guy in the shorts and t-shirt? In the snow?!

Our next stop was Santa's cottage.

Benjy wanted to make sure that Santa hadn't forgotten what he wanted for Christmas, so we had a little chat with the big guy. Incidentally, Santa is the only Christmas character that Benjy will actually talk to. He won’t go anywhere near Mrs. Claus or the elves.

Thinking that all the fun had earned me a little favor with the children , I tried once again to take a nice Christmas picture of the three of them, but Andrew decided he didn’t want to be part of our family-- again. I think we must embarrass him.

So Merry Christmas to you all-- from some of us--with a dirty look thrown in for good measure.