The Non-Traditional Christmas Letter

I actually love getting Christmas letters with Christmas cards. I enjoy getting to know my friends' kids through these yearly letters and hearing about their jobs and vacations. However, I often wonder about everything that is left out of these letters. I didn't do a Christmas letter this year but here are some things I would have probably left out...

• We got our first call from the principal last month when Carson punched a schoolmate, causing him to bleed (OK- so this kid had been teasing Carson for months but my first grader did hit someone and this is never excusable).
• My eldest son, i.e. the offspring of an English teacher, made a D on a book report he worked on in class for three days. The worst is that it was barely a D. He said he got "distracted" and I was thinking "for three days?" He is going to have to rewrite it over the holidays. I am such a witch.
• All of our animals are somewhat crazy. One of our cats now uses the sandbox as a litterbox and we can't use the sandbox anymore. It is about to be remodeled into a playhouse with the sand dumped into the woods behind our house.
• We went to the Gulf Coast this year and that's it. No wild vacations, no romantic getaways, no pictures with Mickey Mouse. We stayed in Prairieville. We go to Baton Rouge every few weeks; does that count as a vacation? I didn't think so.
• Lila is really cute but she must be held 90% of the time and she poops like there's no tomorrow. She also drools.
• I am a housewife. That means I do a lot but talk about a big yawn to describe in a newsletter! And what woman doesn't do all that I do? It's kind of like writing "this year our whole family breathed and had pulses every day!!!" Big whoop-de-do.
• Our hobbies... well, that's always hard because we really don't have any hobbies that truly count. Is child-rearing and all that it entails a hobby? Kevin goes to the LSU games but that couldn't really be counted as entertainment this year (at least not for LSU- maybe for the opposing teams). We watch TV together and like reality TV... wait, are you falling asleep as you read about our sad existence? I am going to start making up hobbies. This year it will be tornado chasing and sky diving.

Here are some of my other favorite things I have read in people's newsletters in the past that made me chuckle: one described their son as "trying his hardest" at T-ball (read: he sucks), another described their job as challenging (read: I am not up to my job title), yet another described their job as "comfortable" (read: boring as heck). I also know that anytime someone describes their child, husband, or life in general as too perfect that they are lying.