26 Days and Counting

This Christmas season is very different from the past few. Being back in the office environment means that I don't have the same amount of time as I've become accustomed to for shoping, crafting, wraping, baking, writing Christmas letters, menu planning, and all the other little things that we've come to expect at Christmas time. There's a little less than a month to go until our family Christmas frenzy starts on Christmas eve. Twenty-six days to be exact. More precisely, there are three weekends left. This coming weekend, Jonas and I will be at Scout camp, so better make that two weekends left.  Can you feel the stress? 

Maybe I'm in denial but I'm not that stressed. We've broken out the fruit cake and egg nog, we've got the car radio tuned to the all Christmas station and we've spent some screen time watching Christmas movies. It's strangely reassuring to know that other people are stuggling just as much or more than we are trying to make the holidays perfect, even it is only in Hollywood.

I'm not trying for perfect. I'm striving for enjoyable. Memorable would be nice, but not in a remember every detail kind of way, but rather in a nostalgic, continuing family traditions and building new ones kind of way. Thoughtful. Meaningful. No pressure.

No pressure? AH HAHAHA!!  Ok. Back to the reality of 26 days. 

Tasha's going to be home two weekends from now and I'd like to have all our our shopping done by then so we can get everything wrapped and spend that weekend putting up the tree and decorating the house. (In a case of bad timing, both of our company Christmas partys are that weekend too.)  Jonas and I had a day to ourselves this past Saturday and we put a huge dent in our shopping list by getting most of our gift buying done. He picked out presents for all his cousins, we finished finding all the story books we've been looking for to make story CDs for all of the kiddos, and we picked up the stuff we need to make our homemade gifts this year.

This week's big goals are to finshing making our homemade gifts and start wrapping presents. We're so blessed this year to have presents for everyone to put under the tree but they're not going to wrap themselves!  Next week we'll visit Santa at the mall, and tackle decorating and menu planning.

Cheers!