Mulch, Christmas and the Jump-o-leen

For years I’ve been trying to convince Liz to let me “sleep in” until eight or nine on Christmas morning.  Liz, however, is firmly in the camp of the early Christmas risers.  I don’t think she ever once has allowed me to stay in bed past six thirty, even before we had kids.  Since we’ve had the kids, she’s even developed a habit of waking them up because they have the audacity to sleep in.  What kind of holiday is it when you have to stay up late the night before shrouding trinkets in ridiculously patterned paper only to wake up insanely early the next morning and tear the same ridiculous paper off while making a huge mess of the living room?

This year was no exception with one caveat: the two youngest woke up quite excited and early on their own.  They were wired and ready.   I, on the other hand, was not.  I’d spent the night before working on a car until going to the family party, driving home late, setting out presents, and assembling Michael’s new tricycle.  I was tired and sore.  My bed was soft and warm.  I wanted to stay there badly.  Liz won.

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After opening what was under the tree, the kids looked ready to settle in and enjoy the ill-gotten gains they had received due to some arbitrary holiday.  That wasn’t the plan.  It turns out there was one big present that didn’t fit under the tree, and couldn’t be assembled on Christmas eve.  We sent them out into the frosty morning to explore the cargo trailer and see what they could find.

By 10:00 the frost had thawed, so we ventured outside to assemble the new toy.   Now it just so happens that I had contacted a tree trimming service that had been contracted to clear the power lines along the highways in our part of the county about getting some mulch for our garden.  I ended up with MUCH more than needed for our new chicken-moat protected garden, and I’m not particularly excited about moving this over-sized trampoline every time the grass needs to be mowed, sooo…  why not cover the ground under it in a foot of mulch.  It’s a good thing I had borrowed a neighbor’s tractor with a front-end loader.    Not only will it keep the weeds down, but it’ll break the fall of kids who are trying to break an arm.  Besides, I still have 3 truckloads of mulch (industrial trucks, not my puny pickup) left to do other things with.

You can see how excited the kids are…  IMG_8265Isaac was doing back-flips,  IMG_8268and Sydney was jumping for joy

For the next few days all Michael has wanted to do is go out with me and jump on the “jump-o-leen” with him.  I forgot how much work jumping around can be.  Between that and the recent spate of car repairs, I’m good and sore just about everywhere.  It’s probably a good thing for me that it’s been cold and wet for the last several days so my body can recover somewhat.

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