I have it. You have it. If we aren't careful, we can put a real hurtin' on this whole Christmas thing.
Tomorrow is December 1, and I am genuinely excited for the Christmas season. And although Thanksgiving has become my
very favorite holiday, turkey legs and dead leaves don't really have the decorating punch that that bling of white lights (because I just cannot embrace the colored ones) and red sparkles do. Luke and Dosen absolutely love decorating our Christmas tree, and so far Vismay is 100% geeked about anything Christmas. However, I'm a bit obsessive about our tree, too. On Saturday when the decoration boxes came out, they simply could not keep their dirty, sweaty, rough, disorganized, male hands out of MY stuff. You see where I'm going with this. As hard as I tried and for as long as I could keep myself off the cuckoo ledge, after about 30 minutes I snapped. I shooed them away from what would be MY perfect tree. Fail. Major fail.
With one big wish-I-had-done-that-differently moment behind me, I'm forging ahead with my mission to create an atmosphere in our home that points us all toward the joy and wonder of this season. Big emphasis on
CHRIST and little emphases on
mas, or mass, volume, stuff, crap, busyness, thoughtless spending, and even... perfection. I say this with confidence on November 30. We'll see what the report card looks like on December 26.
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| Operation Christmas Child - the very, very best kick-off to the season. |
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| Vismay went along with it, but he was totally confused as to why we were giving away all this great stuff. |
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| Homemade Advent calendar. A "craft" with no glue - cue Hallelujah Chorus. |
5 comments:
AMEN sister! I'm with you on the tree anxiety! You should have seen all the fingers all over the Christmas pretties in the boxes around here. :) It just took 3 days to get it all fixed. Give all your boys kisses for me!!
Christ -mass. Love it.
I have to fight the very same thing every year. I think having kids forces us to let it go a little. I remember when Claire was 3, we had about 25 ornaments in a 1 foot square on the tree - right where she could reach. I had to shove my hands in my pockets everytime I passed it. :-)
And, I'm totally waiting for an online craft tutorial for that Advent calendar. You know you want to write one!
We are thinking the same thoughts. I have a ghetto tree- it looks absolutely stupid because the kids decorated it and taped paper snowflakes all over it. All of the ornaments are on the lower 1/3 of the tree. I gave up.
Who needs more junk? I love that you are participating in OCC! What a meaningful way to celebrate the season.
We are making advent ornaments, but I sure like the looks of your calendar. Send me the skinny :)
So happy for the update. . . I was missing you all.
Merica, I am with you. I fought so hard this year not to stress out about the "perfect" Christmas tree. I put the breakables in one pile (mine) and the rest in another (theirs). Needless to say, most of our non-breakable ornaments are clumped together about two and half feet from the ground.
Such a great reminder though of the power we parents have to make this holiday stressful or Christ filled. Give all your males hugs from the Carpenters.
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