So, Josh was asking the other day about how long it had been since I had blogged last. Which is funny because he doesn't even regularly read this thing. Anyways, due to his satisfaction on how little Christmas actually hurt our pockets, he suggested I write about it. The short of it is that I got only six items from a big box store at very steep discounts, and everything else off of my beloved Craigslist and from consignment and yard sales. We spent about $175 on two children who woke up on Christmas morning to a tree that just seemed to be sitting on a bunch of presents. There was no room for anything else, mostly because all we had were big boxes. Also, we started earlier in the summer, so it wasn't like we had to throw all of the money under the tree at one time. We are quite proud of our second hand Christmas. Especially, because it is something that neither of us were raised with. We really are seizing this opportunity to grow our family our way, unrestricted by tradition and expectations. I figure that we only have a couple of years where we can get the babies what seems to us to be a lot of gifts before they are capable of understanding complex ideas. Anyhow, yeah, it was exciting to wrap all of the free to cheap little people. I believe the final count was something like 44 little people. It was fun. And now Christmas is over, and we are left with a tree that we don't plug in anymore and haven't taken down yet, and me trying (when I'm not being lazy) to clean and organize the house. Houses are daunting. I am very overwhelmed with trying to find and wash all of our towels and to fit all of our crafting stuff on a small table. However, I have humbled myself to seek help. I have a friend coming over tomorrow to see how dirty my house really is. So I suppose the secrets out. . . I am NOT super mom. I am a terrible house keeper, and make pathetic attempts to hide it by shutting bedroom doors and piles on tables and bookshelves and throwing miscellaneous crap onto the now at least foot deep floor of our pantry, *very big sigh*. Well, my goal is to have everything clean and put together by Saturday night. I want to be able to unashamedly post pictures of my entire house in the beginning of next year. We will see.