Well, if you haven’t begun already, it is definitely time to start your holiday planning! It is such a crazy year, you may need to re-think your holidays.

Members of my extended family have come down with covid over the last couple weeks. We are hoping all will be well in time for Thanksgiving but Lauren and I did talk about a back-up plan, just in case. I always get and bake a turkey; usually I bake it on the day after Thanksgiving but can easily change that over to Thanksgiving Day if it will end up just being our immediate family.

Of course, I’m on the lookout for a ham too. I’ve already gotten the little turkey ham for Michael. Those things can be hard to come by, so when I saw one at WinCo a month or so ago, I picked it up and put it in the freezer.

We’ve also pinned down our family light viewing trip. I heard they’ll have ice skating this year. Hmmmm, I wonder if we will try that.

I’ve got the majority of the gifts purchased and the week after Thanksgiving I will get them all wrapped.

Tiffany and I have been watching Christmas movies already. We don’t usually do this but we didn’t watch any in July this year, so we started watching them already. (In case you are lost, during Christmas in July we frequently pull out our favorite Christmas movies but this year I read more books instead.)

It’s important to get input from your family to ensure that you are not spinning your wheels doing things that just aren’t important to the rest of the family and to ensure that you are doing the things that are important to your husband too.

If there are too many and it will overwhelm you, have him pick the ones that are the most important or if he can’t decide, put it up to a family vote. Be creative. Remember the season is meant to be enjoyed, not simply survived.

The week after Thanksgiving I will begin my Christmas savings for NEXT year. I like to have all my gifts purchased by Thanksgiving, so that means I need all the money by then too. Sooo, I have my budget go from the week after Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving week. It really benefits us to have planned like this. It has taken away any financial stress normally caused this time of year because I’ve already dealt with it.

I encourage you today to sit down and write down the activities you like to do and have to do and maybe even some ones you think might be fun. Ask your spouse and kids to do likewise. And then talk about it over dinner or a special dessert night. Get the calendar out and be realistic about the things you can do and what just will not fit into the time allotted. (Is it possible to do some of them the week after Christmas or even up to Epiphany, which is January 6th?)

I hope this post gets you excited for the holidays and gets you planning too. I’d love to hear about your favorite activities for the holidays.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº