Where has the Christmas spirit gone?
Woke the kids up for their second day back at school and I am faced with kids who are still suffering the ill effects of poor sleeping habits from Christmas break. I grumble to myself as I poor my second cup of coffee, "Where has the Christmas spirit gone?"
Is it out in the snow covered yard with the dead needle-less trees waiting to be burned? We have two.
Did it accidentally get thrown away with all the Christmas trash on Christmas morning? I know a story of earrings that got eaten by Christmas trash, they were Dana's from Grandma Mary I do believe, so who is to say it could not have been thrown away?
I do not remember seeing the Christmas spirit as I packed away the rest of my decorations but I did have help so it could have been wrapped in newspaper and tucked away in a box.

The kids are fighting again and we have no threat to hold over their heads like "you better be good or else..." implying that we would actually with hold presents from them. They know this not to be true but they do not take any risks so close to the big day.
Their toys and gifts have been consumed by the mass that is their bedrooms and now you would not be able to tell which is new and which is old.
They are back at school which seems to finalize the end of the holiday season.
We are on the second day of getting up for school and the grumpy growls tell me they might need to go to bed a bit earlier or maybe I need to invest in some shock collars.

Instead of researching too much into shock collars I decided to look through some of my recent photos and then I found it, Christmas spirit.
The Christmas spirit was in this photo of our Christmas tree.
From this picture you don't know this is tree number two. You can't tell that it is dead. You can't guess that the cat was taking the tinsel off and that half the ornaments had fallen off days earlier. It reminds me of the calm before the kids got up. Just heath and I up putting together the last minute things for the morning.
When I start to loose my Christmas spirit I will have to look back at this picture and remind myself of the excitement of knowing your kids are going to love those presents you got them and how much fun it was to torture them till Christmas morning!

Also now that I know shock collars are illegal to put on kids I will have to put them to bed earlier to fight the grumpies.
(Just a side note I would NEVER put a shock collar on any of my kids but I did buy one for our pitbull and Heath has been daring the kids to get shocked, now we know that may not be such a funny thing!)