Christmas

We're 11 days from Christmas...

As we come into the last week or so before Christmas I've been thinking about what's been significant for us this Christmas season, what funny stories have there been, what have been some of our favorite moments, some of our maybe not so great moments. Actually a friend of mine blogged on a disappointing experience she had with Christmas lights a few weeks ago and that got me thinking, so here goes...

A couple of our most fun pre-Christmas times:

- Last night we took our annual family Christmas light tour/Live Nativity outing. It was fun. We took along some unfrosted sugar cookies (frosted ones would've meant much trouble in our van), the kids got in their jammies and we took off. We went to the live nativity we always go to in New Brighton. It's one of my favorite parts of our tour because the kids all crowd up in front with Gregg & I as we go through all the scenes and read the Bible story they have posted. It doesn't take long, but it's always fun to see the kids' faces. They love the live animals & seeing actual people portraying Mary & Joseph, the wisemen & shepherds & angels. One of the other places we always go is a place in Shoreview that has their lights blink to music on a certain radio station. This year we took a wrong turn so instead of taking 10 minutes it probably took closer to 25 minutes to get there (oops!) but it was fun - another time of everyone crowding up into the front to watch all the lights & listen to the music. We also saw plenty of gaudy lights, inflatables and so forth and one house completely decked out in LED blue lights - not gaudy in the least, actually very well done, but so BRIGHT I could hardly look at it!

-Another fun moment for us was joining our friends down at the Macy's 8th floor Christmas display. We always go on a weekday morning right at 10am so there is no waiting and we can cruise on through. This year's theme was A Day in the Life of an Elf and really, it was probably my favorite one I've ever seen. It seemed short because there were less individual displays but the detail that went into it was amazing and it was just fun! We ended up going through twice and at several places the kids just stood and looked and looked, noticing all the details.

- And of course, Alyssa and I enjoyed Christmas caroling at the nursing home and hope to do that again next year - we just hope to not repeat driving into the ditch next year!

A bit disappointing:

-You know, I have to say putting up the Christmas tree was disappointing this year. I think it's because I forget how long it takes. The kids were all ready to put up their ornaments but it takes FOREVER to put up our fake tree (it's huge and we literally have to unflatten every tree branch before putting it on). Then the top of the tree was broken so Gregg had to hot glue it. THEN we had to put the lights on and of course some of the strings didn't work (it didn't help that we were doing this during a Vikings game either - you know how focused Gregg was as he is the official light guy!) So anyway, literally 4 hours after we began getting the tree out it was time to put on the ornaments. Poor kids - they were still excited and gladly put their ornaments on but I didn't put mine on until they all went to bed! (by that time I needed a little peace & quiet!). So, next year, we've got to rethink how we put up the tree...

This year...

This year, Pre-Christmas has seemed a little different. I've been trying to figure out why... Has it been the unknown of where we were going to spend Christmas? The fact I purposely didn't do a lot of stuff before Thanksgiving like I have in the past? Is it because for some reason I haven't been feeling stressed about getting out Christmas cards, doing ALL our family traditions, getting goodies out to all our neighbors, making a ton of Christmas cookies? Has it been because a lot of my focus has been on our MOPS meeting & planning homeschooling, that I haven't had a lot of leftover energy to worry or plan Christmas stuff?

I'm not sure but it's been good. I've gotten my shopping done (still have a few projects to complete and of course all the wrapping), my Christmas letter is just about completely done and out, we've made a couple of kinds of cookies over the weekend but I did something else for my neighbors so there's been less stress about baking (and a lot less baking this year), and we've got about 3 more days of school school and then we're just focusing on Christmas - and then we're on break!!

Anyway, enough going on about my Christmas experience... While we are doing a lot of driving over Christmas this year, I hope that through it all my kids (and me too) are able to just enjoy the coming weeks and remember WHY we prepare and what the real focus of this time of year should be!