A Day in the Life of a Drama Queen's Momma: Casa de Drama's Christmas Vacation

Last summer, I had a whole lot of fun chronicling our life through snippets of conversations and pictures in a fun little series I lovingly deemed "Casa de Drama." I promised, when it ended, to pop back in with it occasionally...aaaaand have failed miserably.

What? I have four kids. What more do you people WANT from me?!

But after surviving these last two weeks with the kids and the husband and all the Christmas gatherings and work...I decided it was time.

So, come! Take a walk with me through our two week holiday, filled with as much laughs as it was filled with gas. (But I am pretty sure that was just Grandma's beans talkin'.) We may not be the Griswolds, but we are, at the very least, cousin Eddie.

*****

Vacation started out well enough. I had the day off of work and so I went to school with Brennan for her Holiday Party. What a treat! Brennan was pretty excited to have mom at school and had been telling all her friends I was coming. So basically I was the center of attention of 20 cupcake-sticky-fingered 4 year olds. Exciting!

At least I got the royal treatment unlike this funny conversation I had with Brennan about her daddy bringing her birthday treat to school next week:
Brennan: I am gonna be embarrassed in school.
Me: Why?
Brennan: Because. Why can't I just take my cupcakes on the bus?
Me: Because they might spill or tip over and get ruined. Dad is going to drive you, remember?
Brennan: I think the best thing is to not go to school on Monday...
Me: You do?! Why?
Brennan: Just because.
#IthinkSheThinksDadIsEmbarrassing
#BurnedByAPreschooler

But, I can't really blame the girl. Her daddy CAN be a bit of a spotlight stealer. And sometimes his choices in clothing....well....it's probably a good thing preschoolers can't read! And he does scare the neighborhood with his shirtless "private parts" showing as Brennan so delicately warned us...

Brennan (looking at hubs sitting on couch shirtless): ummmm, you're gonna scare people...
Hubs: why? Cuz I don't have a shirt on?
Brennan: No. With your private parts.

Thanks to the "good touch, bad touch" program at school, my 4yo thinks her daddy's "boobies" should always be covered. And she has repeatedly embarrassed us in public. A couple days ago she told the teen's friend, "Watch out! My dad's private parts are out!" (Because he was shirtless)
Lord have mercy! I almost died.

But, I am getting ahead of myself here! The first few days of vacation went well. The kids played good together. I even gathered up the littles and created this fun Snowman project that uses up lonely socks (you know, the ones the washer eats the mate too!):

This one belonged to the middle little, Kk. She did pretty good, I think!

But after a few days, the crazy comes out. You know what I am talking about....
The fights. The messes. The inability to hear and follow directions. All of this craziness led to my New Year's Resolution: Accept the mess.

We did manage to get things cleaned up enough for the Christmas tree to go up, at least. Which made Brennan think the presents underneath it were a free for all.

I'm bored. I think I will just open up a Christmas present. Okay, momma?!

-My 4yo. Living the life.

But eventually, we managed to ~~survive~~ arrive at Christmas morning. And let's face it...the wondrous looks of joy on the kiddos faces, lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree lights, as they opened their stockings...makes all the other stuff worthwhile!

And the giant mess created by opening presents is soon forgotten in the joys of trying to assemble gifts that were clearly made in China. Or not...
Hubs: Who in their right mind puts the directions to build this thing ON THE BOTTOM OF THE THING YOU ARE BUILDING??
Me: The people who made it. In china. (examining box and discovering the giant Made in the USA sign)
Me: Okay. I guess not. It was apparently made in the good ole US of A. Probably by sweatshop children that were illegally immigrated from China.
Hubs: Too bad we couldn't get some of them over here to put this stupid thing together!
Me: Weeellll, we can always let our OWN sweatshop children do it! Ooooooh teeeeeeen!

But seriously. WHO DOES THAT? And the teen, he put that sucker together in record time.

I knew we kept him around for some good reason.

After all that fiasco was solved and the stupid, giant dollhouse was assembled, we got all dolled up for some Christmas party fun. I think we clean up pretty well, don't you?

But my favorite part of the ENTIRE vacation was when I got my Grandma to take a selfie with me. This lady is a hoot! (And pretty good with the duck lips, if I do say so myself!)

Coming in at a close second, was all the fun we had this year by staying in for New Year's Eve. The kids are FINALLY old enough to have a family game night, and that is just what we did!

Thanks to Netflix, who sent us this awesome package of party favors, we partied like it was the end of 2014. Oh wait! It was!

"Hey, mom! Where'd ya get that package from? ...Netflix?" -Kk

Uhhhhh....Here's your sign kid!

#BloggingPerks #Streamteam

We had so much fun at our little New Year's party! We played all kinds of fun games. Brennan whooped us ALL in Uno and I showed the kids who was boss with a double yahtzee on my very last roll! And they all thought I was dumb for writing "mom rocks" on my score card before we started playing! Psssh.

When it's your last roll and all you need is fours and you get a Yahtzee....of all fours.

Mom rocks. #HappyNewYear

I did have to stage an intervention for the teen and his love affair with the sparkling juice, though.... I told him he was going to have to go to non-alcoholics anonymous if he didn't chill out with that stuff. Three bottles in one night is just TOO MUCH, man!