December Traditions

Now that December is here, I've realized that many of our traditions start around Thanksgiving and keep us busy through the New Year.  Now that we have a child, we have added even more.  It's hard not to add things, as she is in that toddler stage, so innocent and fascinated by everything.  Working full time complicates this even further, because most of our activities end up squeezed into the weekends.  Having hockey season tickets gives me even less free time, though I do love it.  Thank goodness my team only has three home games this month! 

I am starting to realize that all of these things are why our house gets decorated for Christmas around December 23rd each year. 

Hmm.

But what do we cut out?  It's hard to trim anything, since most of these are A) fun and B) time spent with family or close friends. 

This Saturday we have two events planned.  The first one is new, a holiday party for the kids in daycare at my company, complete with Santa.  This should be a lot of fun, as my daughter's little friends will all be there and they all gaze in wonder at Christmas lights and Santa.

Then in the evening, we go to a Dickens festival in a town about an hour from home.  One of my closest friends lives right on the main street and a group of three of us attend this quaint little street fair no matter the weather.  We're like the postal service when it comes to this festival.  And we have seen all kinds of weather at this one.  We people watch, browse the booths, avoid the stilt-walkers and listen to carolers, and check out the live nativity scene while we wait for Santa to roll into town.  We don't always make it that long, sometimes a hot dinner in a warm place is too appealing to hold out on.  Then we adjourn to my friend's apartment to eat Harry and David Moose Munch and watch Harry Potter movies on ABC Family.  The evening comes to an end when one of us succumbs to our allergy to the cat.  One of the things I love about this outing is that my daughter fits into it seamlessly, and hopefully she will continue to love going to the festival with the girls as she gets older.

Sunday will be spent recovering from running all over the state on Saturday.  Hopefully this will also be an opportunity to identify where the Christmas tree will go this year and get that spot cleared out.  We always seem to have home improvement projects going on that impact exactly where we had planned to put the tree, requiring a last minute change of plans and hoping that the tree will fit somewhere else.

Upcoming events include:  adopting a family for Christmas and shopping/wrapping, photo with Santa, a cookie swap with friends, children's Christmas party at the firehouse, adult Christmas party at the firehouse,  our town's Christmas tree lighting, Santa ride on the firetruck to visit neighborhood children on Christmas Eve, and other things I am certainly forgetting. 

These events are on top of: decorating our home; shopping for family, friends, co-workers, teachers; planning, potentially hosting and traveling to various family celebrations of the holiday (we have at least three each year, sometimes four); off-site meetings for work; my husband's crazy work schedule and recertification courses; completing my mandatory continuing education by December 31; and of course, continuing to feed my family a healthy dinner each night and make sure everyone has clean clothes each day.

I'm going to take things one day at a time and shoot for accomplishing one thing each day...or couple of days.  On the upside, my daughter is still young enough that I can get away with being a little bit of a disorganized mess...she won't remember it.  Yet.  Now is the time to work out the kinks and get the hang of making Christmas events at home as much or more of a priority as the ones out. 

I can do this.