Kwiiist-muhss!

Where to even begin?



Thing is, when we divorced, the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster wanted to align custodial holidays with her brother. Which is fine, but the result is a feast/famine cycle. This year, as two years ago, I got Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, next year, as last year, I get Christmas Eve to bedtime.



So after we did Christmas morning at my house, it was time to do Christmas morning at my Mom's house. Then Christmas afternoon at my Dad's.



Mo got a rubber chicken from Santa, something she's asked for every single time we've been to Moon Marble this year. It took her less than 24 hours to destroy the thing. Go figure. See also the Silly Putty. She asks me for it constantly, but I say no because she has a habit of eating it. Santa left her an egg of Silly Putty and she had it eaten the minute I turned my back. Santa must have rocks in his head.



Em got, among other things, a key to her bedroom door. Being able to lock things up from the destructive forces of Hurricane Sister is important, but in a show worthy of Short Attention Span Theater, she has managed to lose/misplace the key three times in three days. I have a key, too, of course, but I'm like 'It's going to be a long weekend, you sleeping on the couch.'



Santa came through with the new Sarah Mlynowski book which was only released two days before Christmas. It's the fourth installment in the trilogy I got Em last year.



Me? Santa left me, not a lump of coal, but a tropical shirt.







An aunt I don't see very often, and her son I see even less often, were at my Dad's house this year. One of my stepbrother's fam's was absent this year, so there were only seven children wreaking havoc. Only seven kids, like only seven IED's by the road.









The big difference this year, though, was my stepmom, who normally does everything and then some managed to sprain her ankle and was hobbling about on crutches and mostly keeping her feet up. It was kind of surreal, and I could tell it was killing her to let other people do stuff like cooking and cleaning up.





After Christmas dinner, a puzzle was brought out, as usual. But unusually, I started working on part of it. I didn't think I liked puzzles, but once I started trying to find fits, I couldn't stop. Just one more piece... It was a bitch of a puzzle, too, 2000 pieces and some pretty large areas of relatively uniform color.






Em and her cousin had fun with sparkling grape juice in wine glasses, practicing to be alcoholics.





I thought the girls would collapse when we got back home, but Mo was so psyched about having a computer in the kitchen again, she played on it until I couldn't take it anymore. And Em had to make herself some hot chocolate and snuggle into her new PJs.