I dunno about your kids, but mine do not react well when they switch from eating fruits, vegetables, and meat at each meal (er, mostly) to having an IV drip of liquid chocolate for 48 straight motherfucking hours. We chose to celebrate Easter at my parent’s house on Saturday evening, to celebrate at home Sunday morning and to celebrate at the in-law’s on Easter afternoon. Which meant that there were THREE egg hunts, THREE baskets full of candy each, and TWO very hyper, very annoying children.

Would you like to hear what my children had for breakfast? Jelly beans. And Reese’s eggs. Also? Big chocolate bunny ears.

I never thought I would say this, but CHOCOLATE? We are through. I break up.

(I’ll call you.)

So, what did the Easter Bunny bring you? I would tell you what he brought me, but you’d just get all jealous and tell me how much you hate me. No, really. You would. I know you.

While I’m thinking about it, am I the only one in the world that did not know the origins of the Easter Bunny and the eggs and all that jazz? I mean, seriously, the biggest Christian holiday EVAH and yet we celebrate with Pagan traditions? That makes me laugh.

Hope y’all had fun hunting eggs.

PS- He brought me a new laptop! Don’t hate me!

PPS-That’s not entirely true. He just ordered me one! It’ll be here soon!

PPPS-Peace out.

I know! I’m ready for Spring too! I don’t want to think about next Christmas either! More snow. More lights. More trees. More cookies. (That part might be okay.) More presents. More CHRISTMAS. I am DONE with Christmas.

BUT! Indulge me for just a moment, okay? I need some advice.

This past Christmas, and all the other Christmases before it, my children have gotten TOO MANY gifts. The two sets of grandparents go overboard and the parents (Hi, that’d be me and Cleatus) go overboard. I had big plans to keep it simple this year. I was pretty well finished Christmas shopping for the kids and had a respectable amount of gifts for them. And then the Amazon sales hit. Did you get in on those? I mean $20 and $30 toys for $5! How could you pass those deals up, right? I couldn’t. I didn’t. I went crazy. It was ridiculous and we still have unopened gifts in the kids’ bedrooms. Eeyore’s stocking stuffers wouldn’t fit in his stocking because there were so many. He had a stocking and a medium sized gift bag that was filled to the top! It was RIDICULOUS. And half of those stocking stuffers are just laying in the bottom of his toy box and will never be played with. What a waste!

I am planning to wait until December to start shopping this year. I am going to hold out for those Amazon sales and I am going to set a GIFT LIMIT instead of a PRICE LIMIT. No more than 5 gifts per child. (Er, maybe. Maybe more like 8? I dunno. ITS A SICKNESS.) I have months to work out the number of gifts, so I’m not stressed about that.

Its the grandmas I’m worried about. I know that my mom will be fine with cutting back on the gifts for the kids. We’ve already talked about how out of hand this Christmas was, so I know she won’t be a problem. Its the other grandma I’m worried about.

She has this thing with presents. She wants her tree to be SURROUNDED by gifts. Gifts everywhere. Granted, she has 3 kids plus their wives and children to buy for, so it isn’t hard to surround her tree. She really does go way overboard though. This year I would like to tell her to limit herself to three gifts for each of my kids. I know she won’t like that. And I’m really not concerned about that. I mean THEY DON’T NEED THE CRAP! My dilemma? The cousin. There are three grandchildren and only two of them are mine. So how do I tell her to only buy my kids three gifts when I know that she will still feel compelled to buy more for her other grandkid? We all open presents at the same time and I don’t want my kids to feel left out or be jealous or whatever, but I don’t want them to grow up expecting $1000 Christmas’s every year either. Because seriously, y’all, a $1000 worth of toys is A LOT of toys.

What do I do? I don’t want to ask my brother-in-law to get in on this three gift limit with me, because 1.) I don’t think he will and 2.) I know he won’t and 3.) It seems kinda rude to ask him to tell his mom to limit his son’s gifts so that my kids aren’t left out. I can’t imagine that it would work out for them to open gifts at a different time, because the parents are divorced and so the day is split up between families as it is.

Any thoughts?

And yeah, I KNOW its February. I was doing dishes and thinking about an Amazon order I just placed and that got me thinking about how much I love Amazon and how great the sales were last Christmas and how I can’t wait for those sales this Christmas, but DUDE MY HOUSE IS OVERFLOWING WITH THE TOYS! And so here I am. Asking you for advice about a holiday that we are all sick of and is still 10 months away.

Happy 2008!

Hope that your New Year’s Eve party is filled with homemade pizza, homemade Chex Mix, fresh squeezed lemonade spiked with vodka and left over birthday cake. Oh, and games too. And maybe a couple movies.

See ya next year! (Lame, I know. But, I’m hanging out with kids who have crowns on their heads and blankets draped over their shoulders. They are running through the house shouting “I am the King!” I’m feeling lame, okay?)

That title just reminded me to tell you that Cindy-Lu’s birthday was great! We went to Chuck E. Cheese, we had pizza, we had cake, we played games, we opened presents (so many fucking presents) and we hated all the other children. It was good clean fun.

But, the party I am talking about happens to be NEW YEAR’S EVE. What plans do you have? I am a big fat loser am planning on having a party at my house. With my son. He’s seven. It’s gonna rock.

Really, though. I think it will rock. We are going to make Chex Mix (yum) and homemade pizza (yum) and…thats it. I don’t have any other plans. I’m sure that we will play one or two of the hundred board games he got for Christmas. (I am only slightly exaggerating. I’ll bet he got at least 10 board games. Probably more.)  We’ll probably watch a movie. I was thinking we could make some paper snowflakes and hang them all in the windows.

How about you? What are you doing? And if your drinking are you going to drunk blog? Please?

If anyone has any fun New Year’s Eve party ideas for me and my little dude, that’d be great. The kid is expecting a party and I am not the best partier. At least not without vodka. And somehow I do not think vodka is appropriate this New Year’s Eve.

I was searching Amazon this morning for some sort of organizational system for my daughter’s room. Her room? It is OUT OF CONTROL. You can not walk in there. There are boxes of toys not yet opened, blocks strewn everywhere, Little People have been tossed to the floor to be stepped on, it is MADNESS in there. Sometimes? Christmas sucks.

So, back to the point. I am in search of some kind of way to organize the mess. I don’t just want a toy box, because then its all just tossed in there, but those plastic bins on shelves are kinda cheapy and the shelves that hold them up don’t usually hold them up. Searching, searching, not finding anything good, and then I see it. I’m not sure why it was included in the search for “toy storage.” But, it was.

And I want it.