Throwing Open the Shutters

I was getting in the groove last week.  I was fa-la-la-ing and holly-jolly-ing all over the place.  But then the f&#*ing stomach flu happened.  For 36 hours nothing mattered--not Christmas, not laundry, not even Twitter.  I was down and out.  

Luckily my husband, Tim, stayed home from work and took care of the maniac baby Wade and got the big kids off to school and home again.  I slept all day.  There was no soap opera watching (sadly there aren't too many left on air to watch anyway), there was no catching up on emails or just relaxing.  I was completely out of it.

Tim tried to get me out of my stomach flu coma by showing me that he took my phone in for an upgrade.  Normally knowing that I had finally graduated, er upgraded, to an iphone 4 (yes, people, I was walking around texting and Tweeting with the antique original iphone cracked screen and all) would put me over the moon.  But sadly, I didn't even wake up when Tim brought in the new phone and sat it on the pillow.

This is my blog, why they hell am I putting up such a hideous picture of myself? It's all to keep it real people.

Tim is really getting into the spirit of blogging and oversharing, my life at least.  He snapped this beautiful picture of me after the pillow presentation of the iphone 4.

There is nothing quite like the stomach flu to make you appreciate life and good health.  No joke.  Once you make it through, you want to embrace life. 

Like a scene out of a Dickens' Christmas Carol, I wanted to throw open the shutters after my long, tortuous slumber and yell to the world "It's Christmastime! Let us rejoice!"

So, even though I was a little exhausted (after sleeping 30 hours, what the hell!) I got up and put my red Christmas tree shirt on and had breakfast with Santa, oh and the kids, on Saturday morning. And got great potential Christmas card shots like the one below.

Organizing our restless, picture perfect family IS our strong suit you know.

Fighting my way back to that happy fa-la-la feeling, I took a short rest and then packed up the family again to head over to THE Christmas party of the year.  My mother-in-law and all her brothers' wives host the big event every December.  It's a grand tradition that no one misses, or at least they better not.  I kid, I kid, sort of.  Honestly, out of all the stuff in life I want to skip this party isn't one of them, ever.

There's a million people and kids and babies.  Santa comes for a visit.  There's a pinata.  And there's song sheets and carolling.  And there's this:

If you want to watch a longer video (almost 20 minutes, but worth it) about this truly amazing family party there's this:

Kimball Christmas Party from Jumping With My Fingers Crossed on Vimeo.


Or if you don't have that much time, you should totally click here for a laugh.  "I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas."   I used to listen to this as a kid!  Totally funny listening now as an adult. Seriously, it's my new old favorite Christmas song.