Last night after my brother’s family left, I got a bug and decided to pack up Christmas. I started with the tree and within two hours everything was packed. Steve even put all the boxes in the attic for me. Just as he was about to close up the attic, I found two little Santa Claus figurines and was able ot add them to the box.

Everything’s gone, right?

Except I was laundering my Christmas tree skirt and it is in the dryer still. Plus I didn’t want to take the wreath off my front door yet, so I still have the wreath hanger out. And I’m sure a couple more little things will turn up in the next day or two. How does that happen?

Still, my house is 99.5 percent Christmas-free.

The kids start school again on Tuesday. I still have roughly two weeks before I start.

My office is in the middle of being organized. This means that I have piles all over my floor as I sort papers from classes I’ve taken this year and classes I’ve taught this year. I’m trying to create some semblance of order and figure out what I need to keep, what I don’t need to keep and how to find what I need to keep when I need it in the future.

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Happy New Year!

I have no idea what to say today. I have to take two children to the dentist and it is deadline day for the newspaper. Maxine’s appointment isn’t until this afternoon, but Justin has an appointment at 11:40 a.m., which means he’ll be leaving with me momentarily when I go to both the state police post and the sheriff department to do the police beat.

The children were up early this morning. Like more than an hour before Steve and I had to be up. This was not good. My children are loud and they have no concept of what it means when you say, "shhh, your dad is sleeping."

We still don’t have snow although they say we might get some next weekend. Yesterday Steve was forced to circle our house on a Kitty Cat snowmobile. Actually he had just repaired it and then tried it out, but there was no snow. Just wet grass.

Oh I remember what I was going to blog about! Yesterday Justin called me to ask me if he could play the video game. This is how that conversation went:

Me: Is your room clean?

J.T: I don’t know.

Me: Who knows?

J.T.

Me: Did YOU clean your room?

J.T: No.

Me: So your room isn’t clean.

J.T: I don’t know.

Me: Well, who do you think cleaned your room?

J.T. (hopefully): The Room Fairy!?!

Poor little guy. The well-known Tooth Fairy barely remembers to come to our house. I doubt the less well-known room fairy wil show up any time soon. Besides, she’s supposed to be cleaning my office. Soon.

It was a good Christmas. I am still trying to clean my house. I think I am making headway and then someone opens up something and there is all that packaging all over again.

My mom had an MRI on Christmas Eve morning and learned later in the afternoon that she wouldn’t need surgery. Very good news. She is wearing a knee brace for the next six weeks.

The kids had a good Christmas and so did Steve and I. Although I’m not thrilled to be going back to work today. I would love one more day at home after Christmas. I would load photos but that would require extra effort and I don’t want to do that.

We have new members of our family. We adopted a kitten from the animal shelter. Her name is Feliz and she’s a tiny little calico that is very friendly. Unfortunately she has an upper respiratory infection, which is common for shelter kittens. It’s nothing serious and she doesn’t seem to let her stop her.

Amanda also invested in three new fish that she has dubbed Shrek 2, Puss in Boots and Donkey.

I sent out my Christmas letter and it was two pages long with Autumn writing half a page of it and I still didn’t manage to get everything in the letter that I had intended. Ah well. 

I better get off to work. It’s a short week.

My sister Kari e-mailed me to complain that now that I’m not doing anything I’m not blogging.

It seems I blog more when I’m under stress and have deadlines. Some may call it procrastination.

But the real reason I haven’t been blogging is that I have been busy away from my computer. For instance, I have started to clean my office, a room that is in desperate need of organization. For the past few weeks I’ve put in everything I wanted to deal with later into it. It seems now is later.

I also managed to do all of my Christmas shopping including wrapping the gifts, which is a good thing considering today is Christmas Eve. (And my hubby guessed his gifts just by seeing them wrapped. Is he 100 percent right? He’ll find out tomorrow.)

My MIL told my son Justin what she got me for Christmas. He came home telling me he knew. By the next day he couldn’t keep it to himself anymore. He whispered in my ear, "Grandma bought you a sweatshirt." The day after that my MIL asked me if Justin told me my gift yet. I admitted that he told me it was a sweatshirt (It’s important to know that I don’t believe my MIL bought me a sweatshirt. I think she was testing Justin.). Her response was that she was going to have to talk to Justin.

Last night as I drove the kids to my in-laws house, I told Justin Grandma wanted to talk to him. His response was, "You weren’t supposed to tell her I told you." :0)

This is why when my kids asked me what I got their dad for Christmas, my answer was "A present."

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We received a Christmas Card from Jim and Ann. I’m not sure who Jim and Ann are because there was no return address and no last names. I work with an Ann who has a boyfriend name Jim, but I’m not sure if she sent the card. At this point, it’s still a mystery. It’s a Christmas mystery.

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In other news, my mom spent last night in a hospital but she should be released today/tomorrow. She went to my brother Keith’s house for Christmas on Friday. It couldn’t have been long after she got there that she missed a step and fell. Somehow she ended up twisting her knee, tearing something that goes across your kneecap (aren’t you impressed by my big fancy medical terms?). It requires surgery and physical therapy. It seems like she has been falling a lot lately. The other day she fell in the driveway when she went to get her mail, hitting her head on the ground. A week or so ago she fell while upstairs to get Christmas decorations. That time she had a hard time getting up. She ended up with a nasty bruise on the back of her arm.

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Well, I’m off to get ready for my day. First up is clearing all the pictures off my camera cards and charging my camera battery.

Merry Christmas Everyone!