Holiday recap: Trading screens for sleds

For me, Thursday Christmas extends the entire holiday shebang for four days. A Thursday New Years Day does the same thing.

Many people don’t want to extend their holidays into multi-day festivals, for reasons I’m familiar with: These days can be exhausting, especially for parents of younger children, but also for elders, like me, whose house this year was filled with visits from some (but sadly not all) of our adult children and grandchildren over the course of several days.

I LOVE having our far-flung family members in the house, mind you, but the extra cooking, cleaning and coordination adds a lot to my plate.

Plus: This year I decided to “decorate the shit” out of our house, so this involved silly sheets decorated with snowmen and pine trees and various other nostalgic winter scenes in the bedrooms, as well as goofball needlepoint pillows featuring dogs doing holiday human things.

Plus: These weirdly compelling nightlight/snow globes, which I found by googling “nightlight/snow globes”.

[Click “Play” and … wait for it]

I figured that some genius would have invented a snow globe that you could plug in which would glow and sparkle sparkle sparkle.

Sure enough — some genius did!

But it takes a real Einstein to purchase TWO of these plug-in tchotchkes.

[Polar bears roasting marshmallows]

ummmm …

Also: I have appointed myself Ambassador of Fun, and so I consider it my duty to make sure that everyone in the household experiences MAXIMUM FUN.