Old Habits Have Their Way With Us

The snowmen have added a bit of sparkle to the post-holiday blahs.

So it's a new year, lots of feelings of fresh beginnings, particularly since we're moving from a large, two-story home to a sweet one-story house with lots of good memories. This is going to be interesting because I'm a fantastic procrastinator and we have about six weeks to move.

We were all a bit blue after this year's fun-filled holiday days as we put away the Christmas bins and pulled out the moving boxes. The kids had three birthday parties, four Christmas celebrations and a few new experiences within those 31 days of December.

And then January came with a bowl of bean soup to start the New Year with high hopes and a little luck.

Blah.

To pick us up, we're stealing an idea from a friend and fantastic babysitter-source: we turned January into Snowman-uary. (Hey, ABC is touting Juan-uary in honor of their "Bachelor" guy. OK, that does work a little better than ours.)

We bought a really cute and super sparkly silver tree for a dollar at Walgreens during their final, please-take-it-or-we'll-burn-it holiday leavings sale. We also scooped up some light-up snowmen ornaments and bells for a quarter each. We hope to add snowmen every year as we continue the tradition, and not procrastinate as much next year.

We put the tree up on its spindly stand and it lasted a whole 15 minutes before Mr. Man took it apart from stem to stern to see how it worked. Hubby came in and fixed it with a wood dowel from a dollar store kite, whose innards were somehow lying unnoticed in the corner of the TV room. I really need to get around to that cleaning list on www.justmommies.com.

Only took 15 minutes to dismantle into a heap of tinsel and silver.

Snowman-uary has so far included a trip to Mt. Charleston to make a snowman, fun facts (January 31 is backward day...shouldn't be hard!), and Martin Luther King, Jr. We still haven't gotten around to making snowmen using cotton balls and black felt, but there are still a few days left in the month, right? It's nice to keep some traditions going strong!