home, at last

It’s not like we don’t enjoy our Fake!CountryHouse in the burbs, but there really is nothing like sleeping in your own bed with your own sheets and your own pillow. The girls are figuring this out too. They keep complaining that the other keeps hogging the blankets during the night in the queen bed they share when they’re over at my parents’ house. I can hear them at night, “Claudine!! Stop taking all the blankets away! Erghhh!”. Bwahaha. Siblings.

Now that we’re finally home, we can take a few steps towards getting ready for the new year and take a step back to reflect all that was 2010 (and a lot has happened this year). Usually I have this intense need to clean and organize the house before the new year hits, like some sort of superstitious ritual. I feel unsettled for the new year until I do, but this year I’m looking at that ridiculous pile of receipts and paperwork, closing my eyes and running far away. Who wants to spend the last few days of the year dealing with that mess? Truth is, I’m burnt out. The aftermath of holiday madness hasn’t turned out to be relaxing after all, but rather stressful and back to 10 hour work days. This is how the freelance work falls.

But look, I’m not going to complain because one thing that I’ve been thinking about changing in our future that has lead to other big important decisions that I’ll tell you about later is that I want to take more vacations in the new year. The fact that in a few days I’ll be writing my very last preschool tuition check in like, EVER, has also enabled this decision. Do you know what this means? It means that we will be free of shelling out private college-like tuition every year for preschool. Hooray for public education and yay for more vacations! So yes yes! Work hard means play later! Now, where’s more coffee??

Mark, on the other hand, has been taking this break from baking like it’s serious business. Dude’s been sleeping 8-10 hours a night. I don’t know if it’s actually possible to catch up on sleep, but he’s trying.