Christmas is coming .... woop woop!

Ah, gotta love Christmas. Unless you’re Scrooge of course. Or the Grinch. Or that chick in Gremlins who’s Dad died coming down the chimney one year ... That would certainly put a bummer on the holidays for you.

But other than those guys, gotta love this time of year.



Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

 With young kids it’s hard to ignore or prevent yourself from getting caught up in, the brimming excitement and chocolate-Santa-fuelled mania. I don’t know if the boys will last until the 25^th before they over-frenzy and have some kind of sugared up Pre-Christmas melt down but I haven’t put the tree up yet. I have concerns it will be so loved/played with/pulled/re-arranged that by Christmas Day itself it’ll be lucky to have any needles or baubles left. Baubles. That’s a nice word.

And chocolate on the tree is just going to end in tears. Actually, it would more likely end in the 18month old on the floor, surrounded by wrappers, face covered in chocolate, tree lying on its side whimpering ...

Nah, that’s all part of the fun. Actually, the tree hasn’t gone up because we need new decorations. And current situation (one vehicle family, hubby in it from 7a.m. until 7p.m. seven days a week) means I’ve had no time to go shopping yet. And it’s 9 days until Christmas Eve. I feel panicky and a bit sick.

So to make myself feel better, I’m day dreaming about Christmas Perfect. What I’d be doing now if I had a car/more time/money no object. A girl can dream ...

1.   Food stock piling. Yeah, I know Pick N Pay’s only closing for 5 minutes on Christmas Day, we’ve got nobody coming over and we’ll be eating leftovers for months but it’s part of the fun surely? What do you mean we never eat cranberry jelly any other time of the year so why did I buy such a big jar? Why do we need 50 cocktail sausage rolls? 6 litres of Long Life milk? A catering size tub of peanuts? Now you’re just asking me ridiculously daft questions. It’s Christmas. No, there’s no Holocaust predicted. Leave me alone to stock pile.



http://www.withrowsfarmmarket.ca/

 2.   Decorating. I LOVE getting all the Christmassy bits out and finding a place to put them. I’m more a fan of lots of little sparkly, fun bits around the place rather than garlands and foil chandeliers hanging all over. I love walking into someones house at this time of year and ‘spotting’ the Christmas decs with my kids. “Look, look. There’s a reindeer up there on the windowsill. And look at the little Santa on the table there”. And the centre piece of all the Christmas prettiness and sparkles, the tree itself. *sigh* It should be sat there now, twinkling its sparkly things at me and filling me with warm fuzzy Christmas feelings.

3.   Late night present wrapping. Sniggering, trying to be quiet with rustling paper and noisy tape dispenser, curling ribbons and sticking pretty bits on, writing cards, imagining recipients responses, sniggering some more. I’m such a friggin’ kid.

4.   Planning the little things. Planning and preparing for all the extra little things you do for your loved ones, okay – mainly for the kids, to add that special Christmas magic. Writing Santa letters, hiding presents, leaving food out for Santa and the Reindeers, cutting the cookies into tree and angel shapes and icing them, trying on the sexy Miss Santa outfit you have planned for hubby if he’s good (and lovingly wrapping the beard trimmer he asked for. Zzzzz), telling the kids that they better behave also because “Santa’s coming” – cue frisson of excitement. Did you know that every time someone in the world says “bah humbug”, a Christmas Elf dies?

5.   Checking out the lights. A tradition I don't remember doing with my parents but one I try and encourage now in my family, it was something I discovered as an adult. Wherever we are, we like to take a drive out at dusk one evening near Christmas and find the nearest, biggest, most over the top Christmas light display we can. It may be the local High Street, it may be one of those streets of competing houses but we’ll be driving by slowly in our car going “oo and ah” at it.

6.   Looking forward .. to seeing people you love spending time with. We’ll, er, try and avoid the inevitable other kind. To happy faces opening pressies, good food (yum, yum YUM to Christmas nosh). New smellies in the bathroom. For those of you who don’t know the common English word ‘smellies’ it refers to those beautifully packaged, come free with a sponge or loofah kind of bubble bath/shampoo/body cream sets you only see in the shops at this time of year. I love them! I’ve already made space on the hangy thing in the shower. And for someone who doesn’t really ‘do’ alcohol, I’m looking forward to a Christmas cocktail when the kids have gone to bed that makes my head spin. I only need one. And a straw.

But now I must stop dreaming of Christmas perfect, and get back to Christmas real. I’m cutting shapes out of the Weetbix box we finished this morning for the 4yr old to colour in. Hole, string and then the tree’s coming out. If nothing else, it will inspire hubby to take me late night shopping. He ain’t getting that Miss Santa suit or the beard trimmer if he doesn’t get me to that mall soon. I think he'd be most upset about the beard trimmer.