The turkey bones and leftovers have been made into soup. The relatives have packed up and headed home. And the kids have gone back to school after a 10 day Thanksgiving break (but only for a week of half-days because of conferences – curses!).
Instead of sinking into a nice comfy chair with The Sacramento Bee (like that plug?) and a nice hot cup of cocoa to reward myself for an exhausting job well done, December 1st has had the nerve to show up already.
Before I’ve even had time to stretch, warm up, or plot my plan of attack the gun has gone off I’ve been left in the dust of tinsel and tangled Christmas lights. Time is already running out and the clock has just started. The race is on – 24 days until Christmas!
Let’s see what I need to do to catch back up:
- Put away fall/Thanksgiving decorations
- Get Christmas decorations out of storage (10 tubs for inside, 3 for outside – I’m currently attending Overdecorators Anonymous meetings for this little problem)
- Get Christmas tree
- Have kids help decorate tree (very fun, but this slows the pace waaaay down)
- Have kids help put out Christmas decorations
- Finish decorating rest of house after kids get bored (takes nearly a week)
- Nag Hubby to get outside lights and decorations up (takes nearly a week)
- Take the perfect Christmas card picture (after threatening kids to look happy and perfect)
- Get Christmas cards made
- Address and mail Christmas cards (think about axing fringe friends and distant relatives pleading carpal tunnel but really because I’m too cheap to buy more stamps)
- Take kids to see Santa and annual Santa picture
- Start working on redirecting kids to what Santa is really going to bring them
- Start Christmas shopping (after making a list and checking it twice, then fainting)
- Start Christmas wrapping (I say this every year and every year I’m pulling an all nighter before we leave for the relatives)
- Start Christmas cookie baking for cookie plate gifts
- Make sugar cookies with the kids
- Debate the fun/memories to mess/frustration ratio as I put my kitchen back together
And just to make things a little more interesting and because I obviously have holiday masochistic tendencies:
- Plan/prepare/execute a Christmas party
Okay, so that’s just to get me back in the race and on pace for another joyful, memorable, magical, overload those circuits, deck the heck out the halls, and slurp the last drop of eggnog from the punch bowl blowout Christmas.
You know, because I have nothing else to do.
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