Happy New Year! I didn’t mean to completely vanish over the holidays, but we were busy having a really, really nice Christmas together. The kids were good, and traveled well, and got along with their cousins and were nice to their grandparents. Many, many treats were eaten (good and bad, I suppose), the kids loved their gifts and declared it to be the best Christmas ever, and our family activities were fun and funny and memorable, and all was well.

The Captain got some Harry Potter Lego sets that I had bought used online from a very nice teenage boy back in the summer, and he adores them, and I think I may be looking at buying used stuff a little more often, considering the enormous cost-to-adoration ratio. One thing I totally messed up, though, was that I completely forgot that Little Miss Sunshine was with me when I went to pick this stuff up, and after much, much dithering over who would be giving who what, I finally decided that the Harry Potter Lego would be the Captain’s “Santa” gift, and yes…I think you can see where this is going. About one millisecond after the Captain opened the Lego, the Little Miss ran over to me and whisper yelled that SHE WAS WITH ME WHEN WE BOUGHT THAT STUFF, and I said some very, very strong words of exclamation in my inner monologue. CRAP.

Later I tried to talk to her about it and I told her that Santa needed help with the Captain’s gift this year because the Captain did not write a letter or visit him at the mall. She told me that maybe Santa didn’t come to the Captain because he was bad, and she seems surprisingly okay with that – guess the news that her brother is lump-of-coal-worthy isn’t a huge shocker? Man, it’s tough to be the youngest.

Anyway, she seems to still believe for now but I believe in future therapy sessions she will be able to pinpoint this incident as the exact moment in time when her mother killed Santa. MOMMY WIN.

Speaking of the Little Miss, she got some lovely things for Christmas and she likes them all, but the one thing she loves more than anything else is this little plastic game thing that my niece was about to throw out, and the Little Miss rescued from the garbage while we were visiting. It’s kind of like a tangram only with about 12 pieces that you have to fit inside a square shape. There’s sixty different ways to get all the pieces in and the Little Miss seems determined to find them all. It’s super cheapy plastic and probably was a dollar store loot bag item and it has easily seen the MOST hours of use and play and enjoyment of all the new Christmas things. SIGH. Although, it does seem like there is a lesson to be learned here about Less being More and so forth. Double SIGH.

In any case, it was a lovely holiday, and I’m really, really looking forward to a few more days of not making lunches, combined with hiding in the house all day in our PJs with video games and movies and Lego because it is NEGATIVE THREE BILLION outside, and I’m NOT looking forward to Monday at all, but at least we’ll always have fond gauzy memories of Christmas 2013. Stay warm!