The Holiday Post.

Hey there, mousie! Thanks for being a touchstone for my kids to rail around! Also, thanks for dying after two weeks! What a great life lesson for my guys!

(Just so you know, this is a picture of the hamster sleeping. Not dead. Arlo is currently getting ready to ask Santa for a puppy. Help?)

So here's my issue with the holiday season.

Basically, it interferes with my Prime Directive, which is, of course, Keep These Three Children Alive. All of a sudden we're doing great but then we have to make crafts!

Tons of potato-print tea towels ready for the grandmas in our lives.

Take holiday photos! Make cookies and wrap them in lovely packages!

Luckily, some new friends forced us into some public ho-ho-hoing.

I got shang-haied into being on the Jingle Bell Breakfast Committee at Lucy's school. I was gobsmacked by the fact that we can say the words "Christmas" and "Santa!" At the same time, the boys were having learning issues, so I regretted giving up my two two-hour per week bouts of freedom. Luckily, I was able to drop in on meetings and work at home, and I lucked into a bunch of fantastic woman with persnickity kids and strong ideas. We also pulled off a breakfast that welcomed more than 225 kids and raised a heck of a lot of money for our school.

I made a couple-four mousies with little santa hats (not pictured) for the kids to spot throughout the space.

Best idea ever: take an old record player, poke a hole in a paper plate, put it on, and apply markers to make a plate for Santa. My old-school dad was charmed by this. He pointed out that every school has a passel of record players in their basement -- what a fun way to repurpose them!

Lucy decorates cookies with the local teens that volunteer their time.

One of my friends from Lucy's school called me up on a spotty cell phone call. "I have ticket to the Holly Trolley, are you in?"

Uh, OK?

So I force my darling husband to come home a little early, and Lucy and I go off on the Holly Trolley, and once again I realize that I revel in all those things that people complain about their taxes paying for.


The Holly Trolley is part of the 12 Days of Christmas. For the Holly Trolley, you pay five bucks, wait in line while they feed you cookies and give you jingle bell necklaces and reindeer antlers. Also warm cider. Then you board a double cecker bus and drive around town to see the holiday lights -- all while singing carols (lyrics thoughtfully provided for you in a nice booklet given to you when you board the bus.

The carolers.

The Goose waiting to board.

The Goose's friend, S.

On the top of the Holly Trolley. The Goose, me, and photo bomb by T, S's mom.

Crazy houses on the Holly Trolley tour:

And then there was the 5.

We passed by a corporate party in a hotel passway that had "snow" flying and I realized how sad Christmas is in non-snow climates.

A couple days later, I dragged the little guys to the arrival of Santa at our local train station.

The firefighters out here are just as handsome and hearty as they were in NJ. We love chatting with them in Costco and giving and receiving cooking tips.

How beautiful is our train station?

This is the train that Evan took to San Diego Comicon last year, and that we all will take next year.

Santa's train. The kids were briefly charmed; but we were too far away to see the show.

So that was kind of fun. But what else am I doing during this lovely season (other than keeping Three Children Alive)?

Buy presents for said still-alive children but also for my and my husband's extended family! (show me a husband who takes care of the holiday shopping for his side of the family -- and swag from the office doesn't count -- and I will get a book deal for that man.)

Decorate the house! (decorating the house is basically taking away things that my kids are used to and adding in family heirlooms and religious artifacts that they are compelled to destroy.) I actually had to tell my parents outright to stop giving us Christmas decor. I can handle a tree, a wreath on the front door and maybe some lights, and the Nativity scene (Christmas gift from my folks for our first married Christmas.)

Lucy has adopted the Nativity as a new dollhouse.

(By the way, in my family, baby Jesus doesn't show up until Christmas Eve, Lucy, the youngest, will take baby Jesus out of his hiding place and put him in the manger before we go to bed on Christmas Eve. We are an agnostic family, but we strive to live by Jesus' teachings: be nice to one another. Treat each other as you wish to be treated. We admire Jesus, and we celebrate his birth. Jesus is just alright by me.)

i don't want seasonal linens or cheap stuffed animals or candles or novelty things that light up and play tunes. Trust me when i say that i have five bins of Christmas stuff and i begrudgingly add one every other year, and that stuff will go in the donate pile pretty darn quick.

Our tree. We finally broke down and bought a fake one, It looks fake from a couple feet away, and real close up. And Evan and I will never need to bicker over the lights ever again.

Our dining room light, plus felted mistletoe over the entrance of the kitchen, from 165 (? -- that great place on Maplewood Ave)

My folks ignored me last year and got this tall ceramic lighted tree, with a train spinning inside. It plays loud, annoying carols but it also silently lights up and circles the trains. Lucy insisted that it be in her room for two days and now Arlo has his turn. It's on the leather chair in the boys' room off the living room and sent Arlo off to sleepyland tout suite.

The holiday cards. OH MY GOD the holiday cards. One year I actually designed a great card that had tons of family pictures, had witty captions, and genuine expressions of goodwill. And then I realized I had Three Kids to Keep Alive and therefore bought them from a card company, plunking in our photos. But as a designer it KILLS me to outsource my cards, so I hem and haw and put about fifteen cards in the basket and THEN I realize that the 85+ cards that we need (and yes, that's edited down) will cost us over $150, which isn't going to happen. So I put it off until I get a coupon, and that's why you will get a card from us in mid-January.

Try and wrap up in a simple gift how grateful we are to our kids' teachers and not fall into the clichéd hand lotion groove. My dad taught 5th grade for many years and I got to unwrap years and years of aftershave gifted to my bearded dad. We've settled on contributing to the class gift, buying a flock of geese and ducks from Heifer, and giving them a heartfelt note and the best cookies in the world.

Did I mention that I deal with much of this when my husband is off drinking free booze and hoovering up bar food at company Christmas parties? I don't stew about this, however. He feels bad leaving us (and answers every single strangled text from me) and his digestive system will torment him far worse from his bar food diet than I ever could.

Yes, I am brutal about culling holiday decorations. But how could I ever part with Arlo's handsewn (help from the 4th graders) stocking that he brought home on pajama day?

The stocking and the tissue-paper wreath with hang around for a couple years, I think.