Hanging on…

Some people love this week – the time to start fresh, clear away all the clutter, step into the new year and new possibilities.  I understand all of that, but I still find this time of year a little hard – taking down the tree, the decorations, and the lights.   Storing the Santa plates and reindeer place mats for another year.  We did it all this morning and we brought our live tree to the chipper with the kids as well (we put up two this year – a synthetic one for the kids to decorate and a live one with stars and lights for the entry).   Our son is a sap like his mom and found the whole thing sad, and packing the toy Rudolf away was particularly hard; while the girls just liked the idea of packing things – so I’m sure we have a few forks and stray toys wrapped in tissue paper in one of our Christmas bins.

I now find myself surrounded with little treasures – a multitude of ornaments that the kids made this year, reindeer hand prints, decorated paper trees, stars and Santa artwork, a baby Jesus in a Popsicle-stick manger and a tissue paper forest of Christmas delight.  How does one hang on to these precious crafts and memories year over year? I know I can’t keep them all, I’ve taken photos of many of them, and I’m not much of a scrapbooker… so I’m really at a bit of a loss.  I guess it ultimately comes down to the fact that I’m hanging on to that Christmas feeling as much as the kids are.  One more day until reality returns.  It’s been such an amazing break this year – so much magic and so many smiles to be thankful for.  The last few days were particularly special for me, as I had a great opportunity to take each of our kids out on their own for an outing – with hubby back at work, and our nanny back as well it meant my last two days off could be dedicated time for each kid.  Having three kids 18 months apart often means they do everything together, and special moments can degrade into chaos pretty quickly.  It was really neat and very rare to have alone time with each child.  For the most part they chose their dates: Kate and I watched the airplanes take off and land at the YVR observatory, Matty and I went for a very late night outing with Grammie to Mary Poppins (awesome show!) and Charlotte perused the Art Gallery and danced through downtown with me as her sidekick. Little fingers hanging on tight to mine in excitement and delight and the time to enjoy that little person one on one –  I’ll never forget those dates.  Now to plan a special date with that cutie pie husband of mine…

I’ve also had lots of great blips in time to create little things that I’ve been thinking about from cards and kitchen wares to some fun things for the kids.  I’ll post about those shortly – but for one more moment I’m going to walk around the house and enjoy the peace of the last of the holidays… and if you have any ideas on how you hang on to your magic times I’d love to hear them!