Enjoying Christmas Vacation

So it is officially my first day of the Christmas holidays I have been able to relax. It has been a crazy hectic holiday season.

I often liken my job to a marathon race. It begins in August with the prep and the first bell on the first day of school is like the starting pistol. I remind teaching staff we have to pace ourselves or we won’t make it to the end of the June. We can’t sprint the whole way but there are certain times of the year it certainly feels like we are gasping for breath to keep going. The month of December is one of those times. It begins with report cards, followed by parent-teacher interviews which can be very stressful because not every student is above average. (Someone has to be average, some even below average but no one wants it to be their kid) Then comes the Christmas concert and the juggling of the timetable and everyone is out of routine. While it is supposed to be a joyous time of the year, in fact it is one of the most stressful. As the principal I try to hold everyone up while calming everyone down.

So in order to de-stress this is what I have done so far this Christmas:

• Shopped and bought gifts for the entire family
• Shopped and bought groceries for two family Christmases
• Celebrated the Olympic Torch arrival with the rest of the city!
• Picked up Jennifer at Queen’s (8 hour drive…..got stuck in Toronto pre-Christmas 5 o’clock traffic on the way back)
• Cleaned the whole house in preparation for Christmas company
• Entertained my parents for three days
• Hosted the McKelvie family on Christmas Day
• Hosted the Tromanhauser family on Boxing Day
• Posted all of my Christmas pictures to Facebook ensuring our “Creepy” Santa was in every shot
• Cleaned the whole house after the Christmas mess
• Had a great lunch with the neighbours up stairs
• Took Jennifer back to Queens (traffic good, made it in 6 ½ hours)
• Went on early morning walks most days (OK, not that early but considering it was holidays, anytime before noon is early)
• Watched the entire Season Four of Dexter in two days…..OMG!! What an ending!!
• Lunch with my friend Dianne
• Open house with the upstairs neighbours
• Prepared for our New Year’s party


Somewhere in there I also got word from editors of two different magazines for some freelance work I had pitched ideas. So now I have to make time to actually do some interviews and write some articles.

I’m tired.

OK, the most important thing here…..and yes, I am looking forward to some responses!


What did you think of the ending of Dexter?

Christmas Decor

It has been quite some time since I have posted. It is because of so many reasons. School got incredibly busy with report cards, Christmas concerts and assorted things. We painted the entire place. And………..Greg has moved back home!

But the real reason for not posting is procrastination.

So I am back.

As I have mentioned before, my husband and I recently downsized from a large two-story 4-bedroom house to a small condo. We had to get rid of so much stuff. One of the things I got rid of in the move was all of our Christmas decorations. Over the last few years I have come to detest Christmas. To me it had become just extra work, more expense and too much stress in trying to make everyone happy. It felt good to get rid of all of those decorations collected over the years.

This year I am starting to get the Christmas spirit back. I don’t feel so rushed and I no longer feel the pressure to make it a perfect Christmas for everyone. The kids are now grown, they can take care of themselves……..and they do!!

So this year we got a real tree. I bought new decorations for the whole place. One item I picked up was a little white Santa Claus. I bought it because I thought he would look perfect in front of our fireplace.

As soon as I took him out of the box Terry asked me why I bought a “Gandalf”. Not being a fan of The Lord of the Rings I had to have him explain exactly who Gandalf was. I was not amused.

A few hours later, Greg came home. The first thing he asked was why did I have a statue of Gandalf?

The icing on the cake was a conversation with Jennifer. She was telling me one of the Jessicas enjoys looking at my facebook pictures but wanted to know why I had a creepy looking Santa in all of the Christmas pictures.

So……..in my excitement to bring back the Christmas spirit into my life did I rush in my selection of Santa décor? Is my white Santa really that creepy? Is he really a tribute to a fantasy series which I never enjoyed?

What do you think?????