This time last week....

.....I was enjoying being at Disney World's Animal Kingdom. What a difference a week makes.

Since arriving back home last Sunday, I've:

• endured an awful head cold accompanied by a deep, mucousy (lovely!) chest cough
• done untold loads of laundry (sweaty clothes stuffed in a bag for a week smell oh, so good! And if I could smell it through my stuffed up nose, it must have been strong!)
• edited 600+ photos from our Disney trip
• uploaded those 600+ photos to Snapfish for printing TWICE, because the first time they failed to upload
• wrapped way too many presents
• tried to remember & find everything I'd purchased for the kids' teachers, aides, principals, directors, etc.
• been told that the party I'd planned for my 4th grader's class (I'm the room mom) was scrapped in favor of joining the 5th graders in their party (hmph!) while I was on vacation. Nice.
• not slept through the night once due to the aforementioned cold & cough
• gone to bed around 9 or 9:30 each night to try & catch up on my sleep
• accompanied 2 children to 2 separate appointments: 1 dentist, 1 doctor
• seen my gyno for my annual appointment (a Christmas gift itself!)
• been to the dentist myself and told that a previously fixed chipped tooth had lost part of its filling. The old filling will have to be drilled out (yea!) and replaced (yippy!)
• made my MIL mad (what's new?) Unbeknownst to me, my husband had invited her to the older kids' school Christmas program. I had to have the kids there at 5 pm, so my husband stayed with the younger kids and brought them and MIL to the event closer to its start time of 6:30. I had only saved 4 seats, and the place was packed. Our row was full. MIL ended up sitting on a different aisle, and she thought I did that on purpose (not saving her a seat & making her sit somewhere else). I truly didn't know she was coming. Someone on our row ended up moving, so we scooted over and invited her to our row. I stayed on the end for a better picture-taking view (and told her that's what I was doing when she tried to sit beside me) so she went to the middle of the row and sat next to her son. She thought I didn't want her to sit by me, but that wasn't true, either. Aisle seats were better for pictures, because no one's head got in my way. Anyhow, now she's mad, and I'm to blame, of course. Merry Christmas to me.

I love Christmas, but this year has just seemed to wear me down. I am so ready for it to be over. I hope I never have another Christmas season like this. I swear, I will never, ever, ever go on vacation in December again. It makes things too hard.