De-decorate Day

I have declared today De-decorate Day, but so far, Kev is the only one that knows. Both the kids are still sleeping. I've been drinking coffee and typing, and Kev just went outside. He is now shoveling snow. We got about 3 inches last night. Yay!

Last night, I was thinking that I still like the Christmas decorations and maybe we would leave them all up until next weekend. But this morning, I got up and suddenly wished for my house back. That's how it happens every year. I'm sure the kids will be thrilled to carry all the boxes upstairs then back downstairs again today. I'm just thrilled they're old enough to help out so much.

We usually have a New Year's Eve dinner with my sister, JoAnne, and my other sister, Kathy, and her family. But my niece and her friends have planned a special party, since they're all home from college for the holidays, and my nephew has a party with his girlfriend or something. I actually don't mind. The dinners were always a lot of work because we would plan a special, fancy menu. And they were a lot of money buying all the ingredients. They were super fun, too. We would have a contest of some kind, like ping-pong or Chutes & Ladders, or something. I would get a trophy declaring the winner, like the World Ping-Pong Champion (Kev won that year). We always would play Gestures. Fun times. This evening, the 4 of us are going out to dinner and then going to see a movie together. I'm looking forward to it.

But first I have to get the kids up and around. On Christmas, we had a family discussion wherein I told them how we always find time together during the week to watch TV shows that we really like all together as a family. We love Thursday nights! I told them that I would like to find a half-hour or even 45 minutes two or three times a week where, as a family, we go out to the pole barn and work out together. We moved all of our equipment out there this past summer. We have accumulated a lot of it. Bike, treadmill, NordicTrak, NordicRow, weight machine, etc. I just want us to do something together that doesn't involve the TV or spending money, something that's good for us that isn't reliant upon the weather outside. Board game nights are fun, but I wouldn't want to do that real often, and certainly not twice a week. I want a routine of our working out together. Plus I love being out in the pole barn. And we can all use the extra exercise. So far, we have done it once. And it was very enjoyable, and we all felt good about ourselves and each other afterwards. This morning will be twice. Just gotta get the kids up...