Happy Holidays from our family in Hudson! I feel as though this December flew by faster than any other year. I hope you have been enjoying your families, all of the festive traditions, and of course, the holiday food! We’ve gotten around to most of our usual holiday activities and have adopted a few new ones this year. Grab your eggnog and read on:At the beginning of December, we got our trees up. You heard right. TREES. Much to my delight, this house allows us to have upstairs and downstairs Christmas. YAY! As you can see, downstairs Christmas is mostly my handiwork by the lack of color and exciting ornaments, but it’s what I’ve always dreamed of having as an adult!

 

The upstairs Christmas tree contains all of our homemade ornaments, ornaments made at school and given as gifts. That tree is by far the superior tree, especially since the kids decorated it.Upstairs is where we do all of our reading and it only made me too happy to “feature” all of our holiday books this month. I wish I could tell you that everyone snuggles all calmly and sweetly to read together every night, but bedtime is still chaos as usual. It’s just chaos with Christmas books now.

Sidenote: I’m so glad to have this little deer around this year! He just turned seven months old and has become a speedy crawler. He’s been my holiday shopping buddy and has thankfully been leaving the Christmas trees alone.

Speak of new people in our lives this holiday season, here is our new holiday Elf. Rosie originally named him Cool Whip. Then Cece changed his name to Peter. So, who knows what his true identity is?  He keeps popping up in different and unexpected places, so that has certainly kept things interesting (and Big Brother-y) around here.

Cece has been getting more independent and social this year as you can see. She and one of her good buddies had the idea of going around our block caroling. Even if “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” was on their song list, I still love the holiday spirit!

I also took Ares and Rosie to a special story time at the Hudson Library this year. They got to see Santa and listen to  him read a story. Rosie was very social with Santa and didn’t even growl or scowl at him. Yay for manners and social skills!

Ok, so maybe there was a little bit of skeptical glaring, but it really wasn’t bad.

As we have done in previous years, we took a couple different days to build gingerbread houses and bake cookies. Most of the cookies have been given as gifts which is a good thing because I would otherwise be eating the cookies as meal replacements!

Going to end this blog post with a photo of a really pretty Christmas tree I saw at River Willow Company while taking photos earlier in the month.

It feels good to have lots of our holiday activities completed, the Christmas cards sent, all of the shopping done, and at least half of the presents wrapped.

Truth be told, as much as I love the holidays and how magical and special they can be, I struggle a bit with missing my loved ones (Dad, Grandma, Joe’s Grandma). Another Christmas rolling around is another reminder that they are not here which can be hard. Also, like a lot of moms, I feel the need to do all the things and be all the things (no pressure, right?) and December can sometimes feel like a never-ending to do list and money-suck.

SO! I’m serious, if anyone has any ideas of how to make the holidays more manageable in terms of shopping and organizing/prioritizing the activities, send me a message or leave a comment! I feel like no matter how far in advance I plan/shop there’s always so much to do up until the last minute. Is there a better way or is that just how the holidays are now as a mom? Moms who have their  $*** together, please teach me your ways!!

Anyway, I truly hope your December has been fun and memorable! Very much looking forward to our long weekend and spending time with family!