Oh. Hmmm.

I have a kitchen in pieces and a bathroom full of dishes and precarious stacks of drawers, and a headache that won't quit. This early-on picture doesn't even show half the chaos.

But the end will be worth it!

Christmas Eve

Berry decorated her first gingerbread man.

"He looks a bit scary," she said. "Maybe he's having a bad day."

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Being an angel

Berry keeps referring to her preschool Christmas pageant as "the Little Jesus Festival".

I refuse to correct her.

Timberrrrrrrr!

We finally got the Christmas tree up.

Exactly two minutes later – in an unsupervised split-second – Man-show pulled it over on top of himself and earned some angry branch-scratches on his belly.

We calmed his howling, packed all glass and ceramic ornaments into our do-not-use box, and decorated the tree like this:

Please note the non-festive bottom half of the tree. It offends my aesthetic side but prevents trips to the ER, so I guess we're even.

The rest is pretty (see Hello Kitty sharing space with the Sydney Harbour ornament we picked up back home in April.):

And the 2006 Berry-picture-ornament is here, next to a really amazing soft doll ornament Nathan's mom sent:

My tree-decorating drink came in a bottle so pretty I wished I had a miniature to put on the tree – although it looks bizarrely like perfume:

I drank it instead, and all was well.

For those who've asked (and who have his leering image seared into their memories): NO, Feral-Rabbit-Angel did not get on the tree this year. The kids are just not scare-proof and besides, I don't like his attitude.

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Oh, bother.

I get off the phone to discover my 18-month-old stark naked and covered in pink Hello Kitty stamps. This is my life right now. And you wonder why I don't post more often...


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