How was your weekend?

Many, many times on this blog I have stated that I believe single parenthood is for saints and angels. Those of you who do it simply amaze me. Seth was in town this weekend, but he had a lot going on. In no way am I complaining. How could I? Not only does he do SO much for me, but he's raising money for charity by running longer than anyone should ever contemplate running. If I did complain that makes me kind of a raging you know what right? It's cool though. I was good with it because we had fun things planned. That is until the Christmas tree fell over (twice), the vacuum cleaner died, and Lila got pink eye (in both eyes). All of this was discovered within the first hour that I woke up on Saturday.

As I said, I'm not lodging a complaint here or trying to make you feel sorry for me. I just thoroughly enjoy those comedy of errors type stories you know? My thinking is, you might enjoy them too. In which case, it's only fair that I share it with you.

Sometime last week we decorated the biggest, fattest tree that we could find at Home Depot. When we saw it there we chuckled and put it down. But my heart knew we were going back to it. Every year we get a tree that will logically fit well in our house. It's usually smaller than I want it to be. I usually get home and enjoy our tree. But in the back of my mind I'm always wishing we had been a little more adventurous. Enter the big fat tree of 2011. It was cold, Lila was with us, and in an instant I knew it was game face time. I told Seth I wanted the big fat tree. He chuckled and agreed. I asked him if we were crazy and he said something like, "this is what we do right?". So we did it.

When we got home with it and let it begin to settle it became comical. We sat here randomly glancing at each other and giggling at our monstrous tree in our average, low ceilings house. That was Wednesday. Thursday night we decorated it. It wasn't until Saturday morning (or rather Friday in the middle of the night) that it fell. Seth got up super early to eat something before his EIGHTEEN MILE run and found it at which point he stood it back up and went back to bed. When he got up for real to go run I was getting up too and there it was on the floor again. I frantically tried to pick up pieces and vacuum before Lila woke up wanting to help. Then the vacuum decided it's job no longer consisted of sucking things up. Mind you, at this point Evie is losing her mind because she hates the sound of the vacuum (yes it runs...just doesn't do anything else). Lila is crawling out of bed looking like a train wreck. If a toddler could look hungover that's how she looked.

I immediately started getting us all ready for breakfast with Santa at Lila's school. It wasn't until I was actually getting Lila ready that I saw the green nasties in her eyes. I had noticed the dark circles already but just assumed she didn't get enough sleep due to her aversion to going to bed. My neighbor kindly brought over her vacuum and informed me Lila probably had pink eye. I have zero experience with pink eye. I mean, I'm aware it pretty much jumps on you from thirty feet away if someone has it. Other than that I didn't really know what it looked like.

Being the good parent that I am, we went to the pediatrician instead of breakfast with Santa. I wish I had taken a picture of my children all decked out in Christmas garb at the pediatrician's office. Oddly, we weren't the only ones missing a special breakfast. The place was crazy and there was a very large family of decked out kids and a tired mom that didn't look that different from us.

Needless to say, the pink eye is going away. The vacuum may be fixable. The tree has a new, wider, metal stand. All is well with the Burrow household. I love our tree. I'm sitting her smiling just glancing at it and I haven't even put the ornaments back on it yet!