Tag along with the Trebilcock's: Christmas 2011

I am so far behind on my blogging. I have never been this far behind. I have just been so busy with life that blogging seems to never happen. Now that school is back in for 1 1/2 weeks and finally I have a day when my calendar is blank. I have stuff to do laundry, cleaning everyday things, I don't have anywhere I need to be at a certain time or kids bugging me all hours of the day.
For the past 2 years I have really started to love the whole month of December. Of course when I was a kid Christmas was my favorite time of the year. The Christmas music, the parties, putting ornaments on the tree, the goodies, the presents, and no school for a couple weeks. What's not to love about any of that when you are a kid. Once I started having a few kids, I dreaded December. The happy memories of a child were no longer there. It was replaced by stress. A few years ago I decided that I was going to have a stress free December. I was going to simplify things and just take things one day at a time rather than thinking of all the millions of things I had to do by Christmas. So I didn't even think of all the things that needed to be done but rather I focused on what I needed to do first and so on. First on our list is setting up the Christmas tree and decorating the house. Luckily the kids love this part. Once they see me bring up the decorations they go at it. They remember where everything went from last year. Once the tree is assembled and the light are on the kids love to decorate the tree. They still need some training on not putting every ornament at eye level. So as they put the ornaments on my job is to space them out a little without them knowing. Now if only the kids were as excited about taking the ornaments off the tree. Still haven't figured out that one. I usually end up doing it myself while they are back in school. We decorate our tree during family home evening the first Monday in December.
Once the decorating is out of the way, I look at the calendar at things that are already on the schedule like ward Christmas party and school class parties things with a set day and then I fill up the calendar with things that I want to get done by Christmas but space them out so it isn't too overwhelming or I am not doing them all at the last minute. These things are Christmas goody plates for home teaching/visiting teaching families, Christmas letter, bus driver goodies, present shopping, and other things like that. One thing I have done to simplify December is I give money to the room parents so they can get the teachers a gift card. I know it isn't very personable, but if I was a teacher I would love it if my students gave me a gift card rather than something I don't really want. I also do visiting teaching drop offs. I just drop off the goody plates to them. I do make sure I do a sit down visit with them the month before and the month after.
Taking the time to schedule things out so everything doesn't come at once made all the difference in me now loving December. I feel hardly any stress (there is always a little mainly when it comes to thinking of present ideas for certain people). I can enjoy this wonderful holiday and focus on the birth of Jesus Christ.
We spent our traditional Christmas Eve morning with the Hansen's and then dinner with the Tady and Bugee's.
Since Christmas was on a Sunday, we only had sacrament meeting and instead of going bowling on Christmas we went the next day. We opened presents at our house and then headed over for Christmas breakfast at the Bugee's then went to church then went back to the Bugee's for left overs and game playing.