And That's How We Ended up Painting on Christmas Eve

When Daddy woke up about 6:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve, I thought about trying to go back to sleep. We didn't have anything pressing on Christmas Eve until the afternoon. We did have one project we needed to finish, though, so I got out of bed just as he said, "So, are we going to go downstairs and finishing painting?" I said, "Yep. Let's just get it over with." By 6:15 a.m. we were downstairs with our coffee and tea in one hand and paint brushes in the other hand. It's not that we really wanted to paint the basement walls. It was really one of those things that happened because we knew what was going to be under Grammie's Christmas tree.
Grammie bought Mommy and Daddy an Xbox 360. We knew that the girls would want to put together the new system as soon as we brought it home. How does this connect with painting the basement? Well, the girls wanted to repaint their basement playroom to make it brighter. Our basement isn't finished, but we previously painted the concrete walls, sealed the basement floor and put down a rug remnant. They have all their Legos, Barbie's and other stuff down there. They set-up games and leave them for the next day.
The decision to paint came when I was talking to Uncle Dave. We decided to buy Grammie a new, really big, television for Christmas. She was having trouble seeing the bottom scroll on her current television She didn't want us to rearrange her family room so the television would be closer. The only other option was to buy her a new television. I told Uncle Dave that I'd like the old television for the basement. And, a project was born.
Once we knew a television and Xbox were coming to our house Christmas evening, we knew we needed to paint. Once all the new toys were in the house, there would be no way to stop the "when are we connecting the Xbox" questions without actually connecting the Xbox. We also knew that the basement needed a good cleaning if we wanted to make space so the girls could play Xbox.
So, for a couple of weekends we got rid of stuff. We took a car filled with stuff to Goodwill and put other stuff on Craigslist. We threw out broken toys, games with missing pieces and random items. We managed to create a lot of space.
We started painting the week before Christmas. I realized we could have put off the painting until after Christmas, but why? We didn't want to paint once the TV was down there. The space was pretty empty and ready to paint. We figured we might as well just get it done. The girls and I put on the first coat. Christmas Eve Daddy and I finished the project. The final coat did make a big difference. The space is bright and light now.
By 8:00 a.m. we were done. It wasn't how we usually spent Christmas Eve. Our normal Christmas Eve traditions involve delivering cookies to the neighbors, going to church, eating pizza on china and opening gifts. We won't add painting to the list, even though we were glad it was done when we woke up on December 26.