It’s Beginning To Look (And Feel) A Lot Like Christmas..
You probably won’t be seeing a lot of me around the bloggy world the next several days. My parent’s arrive this evening for a week and a half visit and we already have a lot of plans! And….it’s Christmas! Even a blogging lover like me isn’t crazy enough to spend the holidays blogging away. If you want to keep up with what we’re doing you can read updates on Twitter.
It’s really starting to look like Christmas around here! We had a big snow storm this weekend and everything is white. That’s nice for Christmas and all, but it’s welcome to skidaddle it’s way on out of here once January comes.
Keeping this holiday month simple this year was tough but we’ve managed so far! I’ve purposefully made myself not stress about certain silly things and I’ve made myself say “no” to other things. For instance, I wanted to do all sorts of different baking the past two weeks. Well, I left it for the last minute so I was only able to do a little bit. I had planned on making some treat baskets for my Chiropractor’s office and hair salon as a “thank you”. I’ve been going to both for a long time now and I’ve had the same hair dresser for several years! Both are small businesses with a handful of employees so I wanted to share some Christmas cheer with them. Well, several sets of events led me to not being able to do that. And, boy, did I struggle with guilt! And I kept trying to think of something quick and inexpensive I could do for both (I had appointments at both places on Friday). Fruit basket? Gift cards? But I scratched both ideas because both would have been too expensive. I finally decided that I just wouldn’t be able to give them anything this year and that it was really ok. I gave my hairdresser an extra big tip and that was it. I could have let that bug me for days and I decided to let it go.
Another example: Katelyn had a $5 gift swap at her school and I hadn’t reread the newsletter before the day of their Christmas party. So, thinking I had all the correct info on the swap down pat, I bought a $5 toy at CVS on our way to the school. It was a little dog in a pinkish box that when you pulled it’s tail and vibrated and moved all over a flat surface. I thought, hey, this is perfect for boy or girl although with the pink box I hope it goes to a girl. I didn’t know how the teachers were going to do the swap and figured they’d choose the children that the gifts went to. Or something. Boy was I wrong! I got there and was the only one who hadn’t wrapped their gift and didn’t seem to realize that the name of the child( a boy) our gift was going to was taped inside Katelyn’s take home folder.
Duh.
So, I told the teachers I’d go home and wrap the gift and bring it back with the tag on it. They were very gracious and said that was fine. I’m sure they were thinking why do parents not read the newsletter?? WHY??. I used to think the same thing when I was preschool teacher. And I did read it! I just didn’t read it correctly. And it was a long time ago. So I’m all angry with myself and thinking that dog is way too girly for a boy. I don’t want him being disappointed in a gift from Katelyn. So, I was going to return the dog to CVS and find something else more appropriate for a boy, in my opinion. Except that, I had already had other errands I was planning on running during her school time and doing that was going to throw a kink in my plans. I started feeling stress creeping in. Over a stupid toy! So I made myself calm down and decided that dog was perfectly fine for that boy. It wasn’t going to stay in the pink box. Once it was out it looked like any small, stuffed dog. So I went home, wrapped it, slapped a bow and the tag on it and took it back to Katelyn’s school. And didn’t give it another though.
Ahh… that felt good.
We had no Christmas parties to attend this year and I decided to not host anything of my own. We’ve had most Saturdays free, which has been nice! We’ve had to do minimal rushing. It’s been kinda nice! Oh, we’ve had church and school Christmas events but those have been fun and pretty stress free. All Katelyn’s teachers (Dance included) got gift cards from us this year. All of our gifts are wrapped, except for a couple of things. So, now I’m ready for a fun time with my parents. I’m sure we’ll be doing a lot of running around but it will be fun running around.
Here are some pictures I’ve taken recently-
Baking Cookies
Since I have a tiny kitchen and not much counter space I decided to set up on their train table.
Madelyn got a little too care free with the green glitter….
The end result!!
Wrapping Paper Fun!!
The girls really wanted to wrap stuff of their own so I gave them some old wrapping paper and let them go to town. There are several “gifts” under the tree that they wrapped. I have a feeling I’ll recognize these gifts…..
I have to mention that Madelyn is really good with scissors. When I worked in preschool one of the skills we worked hard on with the kids was cutting correctly with scissors. It was hard for some of the children to hold the scissors correctly. Madelyn is a pro!
And last but not least, I just had to share this picture frame. As many of you know, when we went to Texas in October we had pictures taken with our whole family. I had ordered a picture of my sister and her family and my brother. I was having the hardest time finding a good frame for those two pictures until I came upon this one at Kohl’s. It was in the clearance section ($2.50), it was perfect and it was the only one! The colors of the frame go perfectly with the colors in the photos and I love the words on it. I had to post it so my sister and brother could see themselves proudly displayed on my wall. Isn’t it perfect?
I’ll be putting a small post up the day before Christmas but until then, see ya!!
