Christmas time is over

A lot of you may still have some Christmas's to celebrate, we even have one left in January with my side of the family.  But for the most part, Christmas time is over and I have to admit I'm a little sad.  I think about having to put away my decorations and part of me frowns because I have to mess with getting the bins down and putting it all away and the other part of me frowns because I won't be able to light my Christmas tree or the outside of my house anymore.  Bentley has even grown accustom to the ritual of turning the lights on at dusk.  Christmas tree lights make me....happy.  They are very relaxing to me and I love nothing more than to turn off my lights and sit by the light of the tree!  But that time has come that I must take them down and wait for next year.
We had the opportunity to host two Christmases this year, both for Curt's sides of the family.  While I'm not as good of a host as my mother, I'd have to say both went very smooth and went off with a bang!  I've decided that I may not mind having load of people in my house.  Curt and I seemed to work very well as a team and cleaned up after everyone as soon as the last one hit the door.  Out home is back to 'normal' (or as normal as one can get with a two year old in the house).  I even was sweeping and mopping after everyone left, I AM my mother's child.  It was so nice to have everyone together in one room so everyone could enjoy and converse with each other.  So I'd like to share with you some things that I learned from hosting a large group of people:

     I learned that I should not set expectations before people get here as far as where people would sit/play, where the food would go, etc. because no matter what it won't go as you planned it, and that's okay.

     I learned that I might want to invest in a larger garbage can, or get more trash bags before hosting such a large group, we ran out of trash space and it just kept piling up and we had quite the mess.

     Such a small space can get VERY loud with 30 people in it.

     No matter how much time, how many days, you spend cleaning before a large party, you will STILL find dust/cobwebs/dirt.  I was in shock that I still found this considering how much time Curt and I spent cleaning and reorganizing the house the whole month of December.

All in all I was very please with Curt and my hosting abilities and was surprised how well things went.  We also had Christmas over at my mothers on Christmas day and as always that went very well too.  My mom and Aunt Connie provided all the food, which was a little odd to me come time to pack up my house and leave because I didn't have a side dish to worry about.  Mom thought it would be helpful for Angie and I not to have to worry about cooking anything so we could spend the morning enjoying Christmas with our little ones.  It was indeed a nice load off, but still felt strange not contributing like we always have since we had been out on our own.  We have one more Christmas left and that's when all my VanHoosen side of the family get together.  We have begun getting together at AmericInn and swimming with eating snack type foods.  We have a rather large family so we have out grown anyone's house really, so having it at the hotel that my cousin works at works for us.

I hope everyone had a wonderful time with Christmas this year, and made many memories for Christmases to come.