Last year Mr. Brown got me to make up a schedule for all the events of Christmas, and it worked so well that I did it again this year. It helped me prioritize effort to make sure that everything that needed to happen did. I put some extra effort into gift shopping, because of the shipping problems, and as a result, our Christmas shopping was done (including the kids shopping for each other) by the beginning of December. We had a very fun month making cookies, singing carols, and enjoying our Christmas decorations. Mr. Brown wanted to make sure that the kids did some fun stuff besides video games while they were out of school, so he made a list as well as we scheduled a fire pit night, watching Christmas movies, decorating sugar cookies, sleeping by the Christmas tree and some other fun things. It was low stress due to the careful planning and overall we had a good holiday.
Last year Mr. Brown introduced the idea of marking the 12 days of Christmas with little treats for the 12 days following Christmas. We had pear custard pie, Dove chocolates, Chick-Fil-A, a karaoke party, doughnuts, deviled eggs, root beer floats (which covered both maids a-milking and swans a-swimming)... then nothing for 9 & 10, then pirouette cookie tubes and Drumstick ice cream cones to finish us off. It's a fun way to taper off the holiday season.
The holiday was only marred by illness - Rosebud picked up a really bad cold and shared it progressively with the rest of us. We had been planning to travel to Idaho for New Year's but ended up canceling because we were so sick and not feeling well. It was a big disappointment for us even though it was the right decision. The kids finished being sick before school started again, but I was still sick that first week back. It was really a whopper of a cold.
