Christmas break...it's interesting.

It's Sunday morning. I'm at home. Everyone else, except sister girl, are at church. Like usual! But I do have plans to attend the Christmas program by the choir that I hear is excellent (and that I haven't seen in the 4 years we've been here!)

Christmas break...it is interesting. Thank goodness I have all my shopping done or I think I might truly be admitting myself into the psych ward right now. Things I don't realize until school gets out and there is no where in particular to go...
1. How small my house is when two boys insist on pulling out every pillow and sheet to make their super hero houses and run around attacking each other with plastic light sabers.
2. How sister girl doesn't play with anything but loves to pull everything she can get her hands on down or out or off their original setting.
3. How many hours of the day I walk behind little people telling them to clean up what they got out and then bending over to pick up all their stuff b/c they never seem to get it all up.
4. How many times I tell myself "a messy house shows that someone is having fun!" (not the mother!)
5. How many fun projects I want to do with my kids so they don't look back at their childhood and only remember their mother constantly cleaning up their messes.
6. How long it takes to prepare and then clean up a 10 minute art project with your children & then how they often forget they even made anything.
7. How pitiful my tree looks during the day but then night comes and I turn off all the lights in the house and sit down for a minute and look at the glow of the tree and take a deep breath and can be thankful!
8. How different my children are: Eli constantly wanting me to play some imaginative game with him (I've been a bad super hero, a dinosaur, an animal hunter all in the same day mind you). Ian can find a drawer of chords that go to electronic devices we have thrown away years ago and make an hour of fun out of them; or spend an hour with a screwdriver taking apart an old electric razor of Nates only to put it back together and decide to play barber shop shaving the fur off his stuffed animals (which I gave permission to - I was going to throw them away anyway). Elizabeth although waddling around the house and constantly looking for chances to throw something in the toilet if a distracted boy leaves the bathroom door open also is acutely aware of every brothers' move and if she hears pain filled screams from one of them (usually about each half hour) she quickly is at the victim's side patting his back and looking big eyed into his face eager to give a kiss which ALWAYS brings much laughter and stops the tears instantly. She will be my peace maker in the house - I can already tell!
Nate is trying to focus on finishing grading about 200 research papers but b/c he prefers to do everything but the before mentioned he can usually be found wrestling with a boy, holding a baby or yes, watching an iron man cartoon that we just discovered on netflix! I asked him if he was ever diagnosed with ADD? He didn't answer me.
Me? I'm trying to not yell at anyone - yes, that is my daily goal these days. I do find myself saying "ya'll are making me crazy! I promise you my head is about to spin off and I'm going to go crazy mamma on you!" Which brings about much laughter. (In which I respond...."I'm serious people!") ha ha ha...no really I am!
I keep telling myself I will sit down each day and do something real spiritual with the kids to keep our focus on Jesus this Christmas season but haven't done it yet - (although we did drive through a live nativity last night and talked about each part of it). I have managed to dance a lot to Christmas music with the kids in the kitchen (my favorite past time) and play those before mentioned games and let them tear apart my living room. I'm reminding myself if I had a bigger house I would just have more rooms to clean up. I'm reminding myself that my kids care more about being with me then doing things. I'm reminding myself that one day soon enough they will be asking if they can 'drive to someone's house' and I will be sitting alone in my clean living room missing the good old days when they were under my feet.

So, as I listen to the Sunday praise music in my kitchen and type while Elizabeth sleeps off another cold and the boys are at church I'm thankful for my crazy life. I'm thankful for a Lord that I serve who gives me the energy to do it again and again each day when I think "really again?" I'm thankful for a Christmas season to spend time with my kids in this tiny house and make memories for their little brains to look back on and smile. I'm thankful for a God who loves me so much that He smiles down on me when I'm losing my head and getting the crazies just as much as He smiles when my house is perfectly clean and my kids are perfectly behaved (well I don't know if that ever happens at the same time).

Merry Christmas!