Christmas 2019

Christmas this year was a good one. I will admit as Christmas got closer, I didn’t feel a big Christmas spirit. I had a lot of fun shopping for others, but then, as usual, I got to getting things too late and had to ship gifts out, and I shipped them late – I just hate that I end up doing that EVERY year and it ends up costing me so much money, and the gifts end up showing up late. I did order things online for those people so that they did get something on Christmas, but it felt rushed and frustrating. I feel like I ended up spending more doing it this way. I didn’t feel like I got Gwen a lot of toys (which is hard because she just shares toys with Cara so I didn’t feel like I needed to get double gifts, but more of the toys were definitely geared towards Cara more). I also was wrapping gifts up to Christmas Eve and it got to the point where I left some unwrapped because I just didn’t care anymore, and my belly and back weren’t allowing me to do too many each time I finally did get around to wrapping. ….these are lessons to learn for next year!

How cute is this gingerbread house (the box, not the one 

We actually tried making haha)

We finally got a picture with Santa this year!!

Christmas Eve I had to work (again), but it was from home (again). I watched more movies, snacked all day, I created a nice pillow stack to lean on during slow times during work (so that I could get a good view of the movie around my screens) - it wasn’t too bad. So that day was uneventful. Although I love when the girls go down and it’s finally time to bring down all the gifts and put them under the tree! That is the best time.

My movies for this year

Christmas Day Cara had so much fun opening gifts, she wanted to just dive in! We had so many gifts for them to open that she got a bit overwhelmed and found a point where she didn’t want to open anything else (it didn’t help that I had her open her new toy camera – that takes real pictures – first so she really just wanted to play with that immediately). I told Larry that I think in future years we should just each buy the kids 3 gifts and one for each other and call it good. Especially since my mom and grandma get them so many things as well. The good news is we can put these toys and gifts up and just bring them back out throughout the year since there is so many of them.

We went to my Grandma’s for “breakfast”, which we haven’t done in so many years as well. I put breakfast in quotes because it was supposed to be at 10, but we didn’t start cooking it until around 10-ish and we didn’t eat till 11:30, so basically lunch time (luckily I gave the girls a pouch of food and some snacks that morning to hold them over). We had scones, hash browns, eggs, bacon, and orange juice and it was all so delicious! It was late, but very good. Afterwards, we kind of rushed opening the rest of the gifts and got out of there so the girls could take a nap when we got home. I felt bad rushing out, but we had been there since 9:45 and I was feeling done (not to mention the girls were getting sleepy).

At the end of the day I’ve been feeling very…conflicted. I love Christmas time, but I’m feeling like we buy so much and waste so much and we just add so much clutter to our house with it and while I love that people want to show their love this way, it just feels wrong. I’d much rather spend more time with family than just have them buy us gifts and call it good. I do my best to really be thoughtful with my gifts to people, but I feel like others just buy what stores push on them. It feels so commercial. I’m hoping I can find ways in future years to celebrate this holiday and make it feel more special and heartfelt. I don’t want my girls to just think of this as the holiday where they get a bunch of things. That being said, I’ve loved watching them enjoy each gift they were given and get so excited about them being built and getting to play with them. I think I’m just very excited about 2020 and all the goals I have planned for next year!

So with that I’ll say Merry Christmas to everyone out there! I hope it was a happy day filled with love!