Christmas is a mere three days away and my Facebook feed is filling with friends and acquaintances declaring victory over the to-do list and sitting down in front of a tree surrounded by beautifully wrapped gifts and drinking an egg nog. I just wrapped my last gifts last night, programmed my children’s Leap Frog gifts and checked the piles one more time.
Canning cellar = Super secret present location
In our home, we wind up traveling a lot for the holidays. My in-laws live an hour away and we usually make two trips in a week because the reunion typically falls within days of the holiday (for 2012, it’s tonight). If we are going to my grandmother’s, she also lives an hour away and in the case of this year, we’ll also be going there twice in a week: Christmas Eve to celebrate with her, my father and youngest brother and then next weekend to celebrate with my uncles and cousins. Between November and January, we will have had 6 separate Christmas celebrations. It gets a little overwhelming and now I know why my parents would forget gifts at home or lose hidden ones!
For me, I start an idea list in the summer. Two of our nephews have birthdays in December and so we also have a birthday party to attend. On my list, I have the gifts grouped by event and when the date is known, I write that as well. Once I’m sure I know what we are purchasing for people, I write that item down and then I make an additional note: purchased/arrived/wrapped. I try to do as much of my shopping online as I can since I hate going into stores this time of year, hence the “arrived” slot. I cross each off as it is applicable.
All those shipping boxes sure come in handy since that’s what I use to separate out the gifts. Of course, I box them based on date needed and then when we are ready to leave, I just grab the appropriate box and head out the door! And believe me, when it’s a struggle to get your children convinced that a drive in the car won’t end in disaster (both kids detest their car seats), any bit of easy I can get is right up my alley!
I do Christmas cards, and this year they were done prior to Thanksgiving only because Hallmark had a sale in October and I had nothing to keep my hands busy one night while we watched a movie. Even though I printed photos to include in some of the cards, my total for 80 cards and photos was still less than $20. It’s the postage that gets you though… Anyway, I was happy with my cards and photos until I saw some of the photocards we were sent and I remembered why I always do those instead. Next year. There’s always next year…
Christmas has gotten easier for me over the years, even though we’ve had to add more celebrations and we’ve had our children. This year was the easiest, lowest stress and most enjoyable we’ve had in the 8 years since we started dating! Although, I should mention that I got to do it all by myself. Neither child was interested in choosing gifts for others and Matt has been working a lot lately, so I was able to just do my own thing. For me, doing my own thing, wrapping gifts alone in the basement after the kids went to bed made for a practically perfect way to usher in the holiday celebrations!
This year, my children are both interested not only in the baking process, but the eating of the cookies. In fact, Sylvi who applies a less-is-more attitude to speaking has been fairly vocal about her love of “kee-kees”. Liam, having a few years experience, is more than happy to help me usher in all the baked goods. In theory, this is the makings of an idyllic Sunday afternoon spent baking with adorable children, holiday music in the background and plenty of photographs to look back on and smile. Note that I said “in theory”.
Yesterday morning, I got to wake my 3 year old up and tell him it snowed while he was sleeping. He’s not a morning person, but he gasped “What?!” and jumped from the couch (rough night… the only place he would finally settle down and sleep… sigh) and ran to the window to look out. He gleefully kicked at the slushy snow and kept yelling to Sylvi to come play. She was less enthused than him, but based on the wicked wind and blowing sleet, I couldn’t really blame her. Hopefully, the next time it snows here, she’ll get the full enthusiasm from us and maybe, just maybe she’ll run squealing through the yard, too.
I’ve kind of floundered for the last few weeks with what to do. As much as I love the idea of unschooling like the 
Right now, we are working on learning days of the week and I’m going with the flow on his weather obsession. We have a huge calendar wall/information center in our kitchen and thankfully, there was enough space to add 3 boards for his weather center, fruit of the Spirit tree and the date. I didn’t make a calendar grid for schooling because of the giant one on the wall… eventually I’ll make a marker so he can see where the current day is in the grand scheme of the month.
The project with super time consuming. As in, 3 days of time spent cutting and gluing and painting… I have two small children in my home, I have accepted that if I want to do a project that is not strictly necessary, it will take up to a month from start to finish. It is what it is. I laminated everything. Some pieces are hot glued to the boards and some are velcroed. 72 total pieces of velcro. I bought mine at Home Depot because they had perfect little squares that were self adhesive for far less than the craft stores. The check out lady looked at me like I had three heads as I purchased an arm full of velcro at 730 in the morning. I really was trying to be cool about it, but I guess it was odd.
I used the 3M super duper velcro wall hangers, 4 on each board. The package said it would support weight up to 17 pounds, but I wasn’t messing around… preschoolers and toddlers aren’t very delicate. When Matt left for work that morning, I had supplies spread out in the kitchen and living room. When he came home, most of the mess was cleaned up and the boards were on the wall… without needing any of his help. *Insert moment of self empowerment here*
As luck would have it, my aunt brought over a rain gauge at some point in the planning process, so Liam and I put it in the flower beds next to our front porch and he was ecstatic to discover 1/2 inch of rain in it yesterday. Every morning, we open the blinds in the living room and assess the weather. He then tells me what he thinks the weather board should say and we put up the right cards. I 
