Life in the Shire

Welcome to the Shire.  When I think of the word 'Shire', I picture beautiful gardens, lots of gourmet food, perfect cozy little houses and plenty of friendly, furry little neighbors.  This is not exactly what the 'Hirstershire', is like.  It's quite opposite actually.   Yesterday, was a typical day at our place.  Our day started with the usual breakfast routine.  Breakfast is the one and only priority once the kids wake up.  My kids usually help themselves to whatever they can conjure up.  Usually a bowl of cereal or bottled fruit with a piece of toast.  If I do make something for them it doesn't get any fancier than a pancake.  They do get to pour their own syrup over their pancake.  They usually pour enough to cover the entire plate so they have plenty to lick off the plate once they are finished.  Then I clean up Jaqueline's mess.  It takes as long to clean around her high chair as it does a large industrial building.  Then it's time to decide which child needs a bath.  Jaqueline usually bathes daily though she could use it hourly.  It takes some time to separate the dread locks created by drippings of milk and syrup.  Garret only gets a bath every two to three days due to the severe eczema he has on the lower half of his body.  He hates getting 'greased up' once he gets out of the tub.  Anyway, you get the picture.  It takes half the day to get the fam looking halfway decent.  I only care about it a couple days out of the week.  The rest of the time, we go anywhere looking however we look after stepping out of bed.  Yesterday, was one of those days.  I didn't have plans to go anywhere so I stayed in my pj's the whole day.  Little did I know we would be taking a trip to the doctors to get Garret's head stapled together.  I don't know how he fell off the bar stool but he got a pretty nasty cut on the back of his head.  They put two staples in and sent us home.  It was the fourth time we've taken Garret in for stitches.  Call me paranoid if you want to but this was the first time he actually needed them.  The rest of the time they glued him shut and called it good.  When we finished with the doctor we headed home for leftovers and spent the evening putting up our Christmas tree.  It's gorgeous!  The top half of the tree has no lights because as usual I either underestimated the number of lights or overestimated my stringing abilities.  Now I'm left with the decision to buy more lights, or spend the time undoing the most dreaded holiday job and beginning anew.  I might even leave the tree without lights on top to match my children's work on bottom.  In any case, the tree is up, what else matters?  Tis the season to be Jolly. :)