On the last day of Christmas

. . . my family gave to me: help taking down the tree!

Usually we wait until Epiphany (Jan. 6) or later to undeck the halls, but since the twelfth day of the official (liturgical) Christmas season happened to be a nice Saturday with nothing planned, I decided we should have a little "Last Day of Christmas Party," to finish the celebratory season off right and avoid the "blah" feeling that typically marks the removing of Christmas decorations (especially if one is left to do it alone!)

So, we all pitched in to untrim the tree, pack up the ornaments, and gather various other decorations from around the house. I (naturally) sang variations on Christmas songs, such as:

Haul down the holly
Take down the tree before my
spirits rise again!
Take down the stockings!
We may be rushing things but
Christmas comes again 'round!

Matt hauled the brittle tree off to the recycling center (once we'd given it a nice "thanks for being such a good tree" homage) and the girls and I grabbed our brooms and dustpans to sweep up the trail of fallen needles. After everything had been put away, I got out the vacuum to finish the job. Kate asked what all the attachments were for, and when I showed her how the hose works, she proceeded to vacuum the stairs for me! (She got the visible detritus, anyway, and before you panic, let me assure you I was right behind her to lug the main unit to each step at her direction.)

After lunch, we finished off the "party" by demolishing the gingerbread house. The frosting and candy were rock-solid, of course. but the gingerbread itself was pretty good.

At dinner tonight, we lit the candles on our yule log for the last time. As Matt had been warning Kate would happen every night when she would stand on her chair and lean over the table, begging to blow out the candles, she did in fact singe her hair on the Christ candle. (A few strands got black and curly; I brushed the teeny bits of ash away with my fingers, so it was no big deal, but oh, Kate!)

Before bed, we had a little family dance party to the soundtrack of "Book of Mormon." It started because Kate started singing the opening song, "Hello! My name is Elder Price. . ." She'd sung these lyrics before, and she kept insisting they were from Veggie Tales—to the point that Matt went Googling to see if there was, in fact, some sort of Veggie Tales-Book of Mormon parody song, but there is not. What a trip. This last activity really has nothing to do with the last day of Christmas, of course, but we sure had a riotous good time doing it.

P.S. I'm well aware I haven't posted anything about our "main" Christmas celebrations yet. I still intend to do so, but 150 or so photos are a lot harder to choose from than the five I took today :0)