What will I do with myself?

I've got a week off now. Mostly to myself but with enough interruptions to make it seem busy. We had our Christmas with the kids yesterday (Monday) to accommodate schedules of their jobs and other families. By last night I was wiped and we were in bed by 9:00? 9:30? I don't know because I was asleep before I got there.

I have to go into the old office today to help with a few things. It will round out my bill for December and should pay off all remaining Christmas bills. That's a good thing but I'll get hit at tax time with all of the consultant income.

I received an awesome digital camera for Christmas that I am enjoying. I decided I can keep it out and use it whenever I want because a) it is super easy b) that's what it's for c) I can actually see the screen on it, and d) I'll get better with it if I use it. I'm going out today to develop some of the pics on the SD card and I'm going to pick up a new one with more memory.

I have some work to catch up for R's books. We're hitting the end of the month/quarter/year and there is always lots to do with that. I also have a few things to wrap and mail so a trip to the post office is in order.

We had all of our little ones together yesterday and it was great. I received a photo of the three of them together which is a treasure. I cannot imagine corraling a 3 1/2 year old, 22-month old, and 6-month old together into a single posed frame. I know I never could manage it with my own kids when they were the same ages (hence the shortage of professional photos of my children in their early years).

We will undecorate today. That will feel good because I enjoy getting my house back. I'm sort of an after-Christmas Grinch in that I don't want to steal it from anyone but I'm more than ready to get rid of it as quickly as possible. And dumping it all off of a cliff sounds like a plan. Really, it's much easier than boxing it up, isn't it?

The trash truck just picked up its load and left. Please let there be no important parts, receipts or instructions in the bags of trash collected from the living room floor yesterday. I always sweat that.

That reminds me: apparently I've given my daughter an unintended legacy. I'm weird about pieces of games and parts and stuff like that. I always like to keep the correct parts and/or pieces with the correct toys. This is pure insanity when you have multi-part toys like Lincoln logs, Legos, Duplos, etc., and you also have multiple children. I thought this was my own private quirk until she mentioned yesterday she was going to get zip-lock bags to keep the correct parts together because the inter-mingling was bugging her. Oh dear. She'll probably find herself spending happy afternoons sorting through toy boxes to locate the missing wooden puzzle piece of the doghouse roof. And she'll be excited when she finds it. And this quirk? It never goes away. I still sort through the boxes of toys in our basement when I find a piece missing. Nuts!

I'm going to wrap. My laptop battery is failing and I'm too cheap to replace it so typing at the dining room table isn't as free and easy as it used to be. I think I'll get packages boxed to take to the post office, and we'll go from there. Woo hoo! Week off!