oh january

Hi friends.  I'm still trying to snap out of these blahs.  This weekend helped and hurt all at the same time.  Spending time as a family is always good, and we did take a little trip onto Brian's base all together.  We helped him clean his office up for an inspection.  Thank God I didn't get "inspections" when I was working.  My desk was never, um, organized.  We braved the P/X on the first Saturday after payday, too.  If you aren't military, that means nothing to you, but think braving the mall or Target on a Saturday and you get gist.  But then we came back home and spent the rest of the weekend taking down Christmas.  That always makes me sad.  And cranky.  And I was pretty extra cranky thinking I'd be doing the bulk of it, but Brian really stepped up and pitched in so much.  He's a keeper.  And every year I think the same thing: Why, oh WHY do I put so much up??  And then every year Christmas rolls around and I get into the spirit and over decorate all over again.  It's a vicious cycle.  A vicious Christmas cycle.

I inherited it from my mother, who had to deal with taking down an immense amount of Christmas decor after the holidays WHILE going back to work.  So that meant that Christmas lingered a lot longer at our home.  But I just can't let it linger.  I have to cut all ties at once, or it will drive me up the wall.  So yes.  Most of the weekend was spent taking it all down at once.  The littles watched, and asked a lot of questions, and worried about taking down the little trees in their rooms.  Brian took down some garland we had in Rowan's room.  She looked at him with big, watery eyes, and pleaded, "Don't take down my garland.  It's my very very favorite."  So he put it back up.  Sucker.  We found it in an open box of decorations later.  So she had decided it was time all on her own.  The girl likes to operate life on her own terms, trust me.

We got *most* of it packed away.  There are still a couple things here and there, but it looks pretty normal here.  I promised Rowan some Valentine's decorations, so that's what I'll be working on this week.  Brian took out the tree and burned it in the bonfire.  I missed it, but he said the flames shot up about 30 feet in the air.  Whoa.  I wanted to take pictures, but missed out.  That thing was dry, dry, dry. It took me a while vacuuming up the needles that got left behind.

And that's our weekend!  I'm trying to find the joys in our day to day to cheer me up, and watching Downton Abbey last night went a far way to cheer me right up!  Also catching up on blogs this morning has been fun.  Especially my friend, Karen's blog.  She's been documenting her pregnancy, birth, and baby boy for over a year now.  And today's post was so super brave, regarding post partum.  I'm so proud of her, and of what a great mama she is.  I have a lot of fun things to look forward to coming up this winter and spring, so I'm going to focus on that and forge ahead.

How do you combat those winter blahs?