Christmas 2015

I'll set the scene for you: It's 9:25 on a Saturday night and I'm tucked into bed with my laptop and there are multiple spoons on the pillow beside me. They had cheesecake on them, in case you were wondering. If you're also wondering how many spoons there are, that's too bad. I'm not in the mood to tell you.

At this, some perplexed reader might knit their brow and say, "Wait, why spoons? Is there not only one of you?" 

And I might say, "Yes, but I was trying not to be a double-dipper. And I only meant to have one bite. And then only one more. And then, again, only one more..." And then I might look at the pile of spoons and sigh and say, "Perhaps I should've just taken a whole slice in the first place."

But a whole slice of cheesecake seems like a lot to have right before bed. Many spoonfuls feel, somehow, less. Even if they end up being about the same amount. You can kind of pretend it's just the same spoonful over and over, instead of a new one each time. You'll lay in your bed and think to yourself, I feel like I've eaten an entire cheesecake! You'll laugh, because you know it's all in your head. After all, you've only had one spoonful.

In any case, I've made a sizeable dent in the cheesecake left over from Krause Christmas yesterday. 

It's been a fun Christmas so far, but - man alive - I'm tired. And it's not even over yet. When it's over - next week - our stats will be as follows:

16 hours of driving (with a toddler, so about equal to 378 hours)

5 "Christmas Days"

3 Christmas parties

1,000,000 grams of sugar

Lots of other stuff

Not a lot of sleep though

We went to my parents' farm for a couple days, and then jetted over to Medicine Hat to see my mom's family, and then back here for Barclay's family Christmas. So far, it's looked something like this (I'll start with a totally-not-staged picture of us smiling in the car while Sullivan freaks out in the back seat, taken by some abstract Being floating just outside the passenger window with a camera):

This coming week we're heading up to Elbow for my extended Christensen family Christmas and then back to Regina for our own little family Christmas and then it'll all be officially over, which is absolutely sad but also quite good - for the sake of routine and sanity and stuff.

Routine and sanity and stuff - three things I could've done completely without just a few short years ago. This is what they mean when they say that kids change everything. Including Christmas.

But I'm sure you noticed the ratio of Sullivan pictures to anything else pictures in this post and guessed pretty quickly what my favourite part of all the festivities was this year: watching him hang out with his cousins and grandparents and great-grandparents and aunts and uncles, watching him open presents, watching him explore the places we visited, watching him...yeah. Just watching him.

That's kind of been my favourite part of everything lately.