So much to do so little time

I realized today that I haven't blogged in awhile and I really wanted to be better about blogging. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to write about so this is just going to be free form Erin thoughts. I won't feel bad if you stop reading now. . .

OK, still here?!

Why is it that at Christmas time there is so much to do and so little time? Like take the lights on the house - you have to put them up when it's light outside and by the time you get home from work it's dark, so you have to take a weekend day to do it. Then there's the tree. You have to go pick one out, trim it and get it in the stand and keep it watered. This is normally the domain of the man of the house. After a couple of days of relaxing you can put on the lights (again the man's domain) and decorate it. Of course you have to decorate the house too. And the kids are old enough to want to help, which creates it's own stress (broken glass ornaments anyone?). Well, we've got all that done and then there's the Christmas shopping. I tried to do as much online this year as possible. I also took a day off of work because it's easier to shop in the middle of the week than during the crowded weekends. After you buy the presents then you have to wrap them all. Before kids I took a great deal of time picking the perfect gift for everyone and wrapping in the most beautiful way possible. Now I grab the first thing I see and if you're lucky you might get a press on bow. Time management is a bitch.

And my favorite thing to do and the most dreaded is the christmas cookie extravaganza. I've discovered this year that I must do this with my mom. I can't do it alone and no one else can work with me when I'm in the cookie zone. This year I set up all the ingredients on one half of the island. Mom measured the dry stuff, I measured the wet stuff. I then had the mixer on the counter next to the island. We'd get one dough done and put it in a ziploc bag with the cooking instructions on it (so I didn't have to break out the cookbook again) and move on to the next dough. I figured I'd cook the cookies during the week, but then it would take every night, so I decided to start cooking them after we finished cleaning up from dough making. We made chocolate crinkles, snickerdoodles, gingersnaps, hazelnut rounds, peanut blossoms, and gingerbread cutouts. The kids helped with decorating the gingerbread cutouts and it actually was fun and I didn't stress about it. So from noon on Sunday until 7:00 that night I made Christmas cookies. And it was the least stressful year ever. Go figure.

Wow, it looks like I did have something to say after all. Now all I have to do is finish the laundry and start packing the kids for the trip to KC for Christmas. Oh and I want to give a shout out to President Obama for giving me four hours of leave on Christmas Eve. I was scraping leave days together to have enough for our vacation. Now there are no worries. Can't wait for vacation to start so I can sit back and relax and not be responsible and have a ton of babysitters and see my nephew Jaxon for the first time and hang out with my in-laws whom I love and hopefully play in the snow and I could keep going but I'll stop now so you can take a breath from this super long run on sentence.

Oh I also noticed that I haven't uploaded photos in a while, so here's some Christmas photos of the kids. Most were taken after visiting Santa. Santa gave them the candy canes and the deer antlers. Enjoy!

I hope your holiday season is as stressLESS as possible!!!!