The (Lack of) Holiday Spirit

As you can see, the blog has gotten a little sprinkling of holiday cheer. This is more for what I can say about our house. I love this time of year, but it seems everything is working against me to get that cheer and warmth into my own life right now.

I know we've created this situation a bit ourselves. We've traveled twice in the past two weeks, I've coordinated two major events at school, and it's the end of the semester. The last month of school is horrendous! At school alone, the calendar is filled with social events, preparing summative assessments (and then grading them, ughhh), assemblies, and then cleaning and organizing my room for summer break.

On to this summer break business, while I love warm weather and am excited about the upcoming beach season and the fact that I'll have two months off and we'll have two "summer" vacations (Jan. & Feb. in Peru and July in the U.S.) again this year, it is REALLY hard to celebrate Christmas when you're walking around in short sleeved shirts and can't even think about consuming hot chocolate or even my beloved Starbucks' Peppermint Mocha. Our neighbors have their Christmas lights on their houses and the stores are brimming with flashy displays and are booming holiday music, but it just doesn't seem genuine to me. I grew up with a Norman Rockwell New England Christmas with fantastic traditions that I shared with my parents and siblings. Christmas for me means, cold air, hopefully snow, big wool sweaters and opening our presents next to the woodstove.

Well, this year, at Los Lemleys, things are a bit different. The only visible sign of Christmas in our house is the Little People Musical Christmas set that Nana sent, set up in the living room (and the pumpkins from Halloween). We are all suffering from colds with Maximo fighting off the worst - a viral infection in his chest which brought us to the doctor on Thursday night and now he is on steroids for a few days to help with the inflammation as well as an inhaler to help with his wheezing.

I've been waiting all week to sit on this couch and do nothing. Hopefully by getting the blog decorated for the holidays it will get me motivated so tomorrow, I'll wake up, refreshed, throw on the Christmas music, and we'll put up the tree and the stockings, even if it will be done in short-sleeves.