Extending the Holidays (A Positive Change)

We are home! Lucy has reclaimed the living room and is refusing to go into her cage. Guess who slept on the couch last night so that she could enjoy stretching her legs after a week of boarding?

Because of the storms on the eastern side of the country yesterday, the airport was insane. There were so many cancelled flights that in order to accommodate travelers, United was offering credits of up to $1500 per person if you were willing to get bumped to another flight. We were not willing. We are not flexible travelers. 

My MIL and I had an interesting convo last week about the very quick spin-up to Christmas, and then the "blah" months of January - March or so. For a variety of reasons, those months are typically very hard for me. Is it all the darkness? The cold? The lack of regular holidays or events to break up that stretch of time? Maybe it's that after having so many fun and different holidays in quick succession (Halloween/fall in general/Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year), it is a shock to the system to have nothing at all on the horizon...? This is a first world problem for sure, but a problem nonetheless that I am very aware of in my life. It affects my mood and my attitude and my behavior.

My MIL said that a woman she knows was talking about how her kids just hated it when she took down the Christmas decorations. So, she replaced some of the decs with snowmen (as a winter decoration in January) and the kids perked up. As a family, they turned this into a monthly habit, picking a few small seasonal things to do around the house. On the one hand, I can see how someone can take this too far and turn it into "something else that must get done" each month - sort of a Hallmark Moments way of living. I can see how it creates pressure and can be expensive. That said, I can also see how it can be a fun way to mark the passing of time and the smaller "seasons," if you will, that occur within the greater umbrella of the long Colorado winter. I'm going to try it.

Starting with the dining room table, which is decorated more for winter than for the holidays. So, when the Christmas decs get put away (not until at least this weekend! We are enjoying the lights and colors for a little while longer!), these will stay out for a while, and then I'll replace them with something new around February or March. And that can tide us over, as far as decorations go, until the summer.

We haven't made any improvements or changes to the house lately (still recovering from selling the VA house over the summer, and the insanity of my schedule this fall), so a few scattered decorations will be a welcome change.

Are you thinking of goals for the new year? Any New Year's Eve plans? We're gonna lay low and stick around here with the bun bun. G has been sick for over a week (Merry Christmas!) and I've been valiantly fighting it off (and ever so slowly losing the fight) for the last few days, so things will be low-key around dawrighthouse for the next few days.

You know what that means? Reading!