{and the stockings were hung...finally!}

I have spent the last 2 days getting ready for and working my hiney off for the most celebrated holiday on earth, a day when your wee one's eyes are filled with wonder and amazement at the majesty of it all. Yeah right! Only in the movies. At least not when they turn 10 & 15! Since moving into our very first house, I wanted to really make everything super nice and after 2 days of carting everything out of the attic (yes, all by myself!!!!.....not easy, the attic stairs scared me to death, flip flops are NOT a good idea!!), going thru everything, strategically planning each and every room, making my lists of what I needed to "set the scene", and last but not least putting back everything that I didn't use (you know the Christmas crap....what made me think that I was going to start collecting the Kmart Christmas bear anyway?) and making a trip into Jacksonville to make a few purchases to complete "the look", I am finally done! It is complete. And it looks pretty good I might add. We have not put up our tree yet, that is something that we do as a family, we go pick it out and then we decorate it together. Oh, back to my angelic prodigies and their lack of twinkle in their eyes, to their credit they have been quite complimentary on all of my hardwork, but they don't seem very excited. I,on the other hand, am getting ready for hot chocolate and playing Christmas music and thinking about how nice and cozy and Christmasy (is that a word?) that everything is and the children, the kids, the little people who should be more excited then I, seem less than enthusiastic. I think that it just saddens me that they are growing up and life is getting too serious for them and I am coming to the realization that I no longer have "young" children and I am so going to miss that this Christmas. I knew that last Christmas was probably my last year that Action would have that special kind of excitement that comes with Christmas, but I was hoping for just one more year.................. just one more?