Winter Break Over, Thank God

The kids have been gone for 1 1/2 hours and I have gotten the bathroom scrubbed, a load in the washing machine, the kitchen cleaned up, and have taken a shower. I wish I was always this motivated. It was a long two weeks full of fun and stress. That is all I can say without going into every detail of every rage and each moment of fun, which would take me all day.

I have been thinking about New Years Eve a lot. Akila ended up going to a friends for a sleepover and we had 2 families over for dinner and fun. Both families brought some yummy sparkling juice and we had a toast for the new year. Imani has for months been wanting me to buy wine glasses or something with stems as we have no formal or nice glasses. I did buy a set at a thrift store last month for thirty cents each and brought them out for the evening. Then as we were toasting, it struck me as very weird to sit and emulate something that we don't do in our family, drink alcohol. Yet we are pretending to do so as if it is glamorous or something. I have been thinking ever since as to why we would do that with our kids knowing the impact that alcohol has had on our family. I think about the fact that alcohol has brought great stress into all of our live, including poor Akila's. And the fact is, it is only going to get worse in her teenage years.

I think that will be our last year of sparkling juice in wine glasses. I may have to breakdown and go buy some fancy water goblets to satisfy Imani's desire to drink out of cool glasses and bring the wine glasses back to the thrift store.