Official end of our holidays, for real and finally

After Christmas and possibly New Year’s, you’d think the holidays were over. In our family, though, the holidays go from early November, starting with my nephew Sebastian’s birthday, to mid-January, ending with Laura’s birthday. Holiday birthdays in our family include my nephews Harrison, Sebastian, and Manny; my mother, my father, and my brother; and me and Laura. So in that two and a half month period, we have three national holidays, eight birthdays, and final exams.

That sounds like a lot, but when you add in the fact that we typically have three holiday celebrations (one with Chris’s mom, another with his Dad—damn that divorce thing—and then one with my family) and some multiple birthday parties too, well it just gets to be quite a lot to do. Aside from being practically bankrupt right now, I am just pooped.

Laura’s ten now, and she had three parties, although all very small ones this year. Chris’s mom came last weekend with a birthday cake, so that was number one, complete with presents (my mom and dad gave Laura her presents at New Year’s, but with their typical low fanfare). Number two: our family party—just the four of us, usually, but this year my brother Matt and his wife came to have dinner and cake with us too. And then third and final, thank God, Laura’s sleepover last night with her friends Adeleigh and Kristen.

I felt terrible for Kristen all night—I’d really sort of forgotten the three-girl sleepover phenomenon, where one is the odd girl out. It was definitely Kristen. Laura and Adeleigh were just singing their lungs out to their favorite cd in the car, and Kristen was just listening. Laura and Adeleigh were playing My Scene Barbies just as hard as they could, and Kristen was trying hard to pretend like she was interested. Laura and Adeleigh probably stayed up til 3:00, and Kristen, who had gotten up early that morning to take care of her horses, fell asleep almost as soon as she hit the bed. Of course, she was up for a long time by herself the next morning too. Poor thing. I hope it wasn’t too awful. I sure do remember that feeling. Ugh.

Laura seemed to have a wonderful time, although Adeleigh was her usually high-stress, high-maintenance self. That child gets sick every time she has to do something she doesn’t want to, and sometimes when she does. And you ask what’s wrong, and she says, oh, it’s just stress. This from a third-grader. I’m glad Laura’s a little more flexible. On the whole, though, I think Will had the best time. Chris and I took all the kids last night to see The Incredibles—Will’s first real movie-theater movie. He loved it, especially the villain robot. He talked to my mom on the phone last night, and it was hilarious to listen to: “We went to the MOVIES. We saw The INCREDIBLES. There was a big ROBOT. We had POPCORN. I made a MESS.”

So we had popcorn. We had pizza. We had cake and ice cream and presents. And we made a mess.