So far so good

What a slacker I have been with this blog!!!  Hey, I was away for a week.  Can I blame it on that? 

Last Christmas, (I gave you my heart, but the very next day...)

ahem.

Last Christmas was probably the WORST Christmas ever for me, as far as being ready, prepared, relaxed, etc.  Everything was totally last-minute and instead of having FUN picking out gifts, decorating, baking and stuff, it felt like a big race that I was totally behind in.  It caused a lot of stress and really bummed me out.  I was so glad when it was over, and I hated that!  I vowed, NEVER AGAIN would I wait till the very last minute to do everything!  I made a point to have everything done and taken care of by Dec. 1, so I could actually enjoy the Christmas season and spend that (somehow elusive) quality time with my kids, baking cookies and all that stuff that you envision yourself doing with your kids when you first become a mother and you still think that it will be easy. 

So...it's December 1.  While I don't have everything done, I'm proud to say that I'm way more ahead this year than I've pretty much ever been.  At least I have a plan this year.  Maybe the gifts aren't all bought/made yet, but I know what everyone is getting, and that's gotta count for something, right?  It is so much easier to plan when you're not all stressed out.  I'm incredibly thankful that this year, for the first time in a very long time, I'm not all stressed out.  I'm cool.  Life is good. :)

But getting back to December 1.  Thanks to my mom, the kids have advent calendars, because goodness knows I can never remember to get those in time.  As I was writing out Nolan's preschool tuition check this morning, I realized what date it was, and actually remembered to do the advent calendars!  The kids thought it was way cool.  They wanted to open all the flaps and I think it gave them a thrill to find out that they had to wait. 

In addition to the fridge calendars, I thought it would be really fun this year to give the kids little surprises every day until Christmas, too.  Not necessarily material gifts, but just little surprise things they get to do, or make, or whatever.  Today just so happened to be a gift.  I found these acrylic frames and put their names on top (in glitter of course - I totally love glitter) ...now they can choose ONE piece of artwork they would like to display on the fridge and put it in their own frames.   The idea is to prevent the fridge from getting so covered in paper that we can't find the appliance itself - it happens all the time.  Not beautiful, but the kids thought they were pretty cool. 

So here are some other ideas I had...and I was going to go through the calendar and see which days would be good for each surprise.  And we're not doing something "big" everyday because I just can't do that; I'm not that organized.   But here were some things I came up with:

little gifties (little. like pencils. that sort of thing.)

go to see Santa

decorate the tree

stay up to watch "Rudolph" on tv (tomorrow, as a matter of fact!)

bake Christmas cookies

make candy

do Toys for Tots shopping (they each get to pick out a gift or two and put it in the box)

pick out the Christmas tree

make ornaments - I just found out about these awesome kid-friendly cinnamon ones that smell so goooood

do gingerbread house(s)

read a Christmas book (this will be one that we can do several different days)

read a Christmas passage from the B-I-B-L-E (again, several days)

go shopping for Daddy's presents

decorate their rooms

Kids like to have our time.  We do all this stuff for them, but I really feel like I want to do more things with them.