My Christmas Wish

I blog this dear friends so that maybe knowing that all of  you know, will help my dreams of the perfect Holiday come true, instead of the nightmare version that could very easily happen without the organization that it takes to orchestrate our way through my favorite beloved holiday...Christmas.

 I LOVE Christmas.  Our tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving.  We bake cookies, we make ornaments and fun Christmas crafts, we look at the lights, and we spend lots of quality and quantity time with family.  The kind of time where you get past the visiting and move on to the games, puzzles, and Christmas Movies all over Christmas goodies, hot chocolate and Anne's famous Christmas Tea.  This is the time slow down and enjoy those memories and traditions with family.
Such tranquil memories, until I think about the preparation that it takes to get there.  I find that this time each year I start thinking about making plans for Christmas, with the best of intentions, but typically I make plans to be organized and don't  follow through. The Christmas Season brings mayhem.  We have a gazillion presents to purchase. We frantically cook and clean and cook and clean some more.  We have to juggle schedules to get everyone to where they need to go.  We have to find babysitters so that we can shop and so that we can attend the Christmas Parties.  We cook and clean and cook and clean some more.  Then we wrap and wrap and wrap.  Time finally runs out and Christmas  arrives.  Oh yeah,  I almost forgot one SMALL detail...this year I am homeschooling five children through it all.  No pressure or anything to be that Superhero Homeschool Mom of the Year OR damage my children's education FOREVER (just kidding...a little dramatic flair just makes the post more exciting)! 
This year I have to make plans to be more organized and stick with them.  If I don't you may find me so overwhelmed that I am crying in the corner, with all five of my children running amuck, having to order Pizza every night for supper, and everyone getting socks and underwear from us this year because I don't have an ounce of creativity left in me.
So these are my plans to organize and simplify in order to enjoy this season.  I will try to blog on my progress and share my recipe's etc with you all.  If there are no more posts about this you know that my organization plan has probably failed miserably.
*1. In the rest of October and November, I plan to make 20 freezer meals and plan out 10 crock pot meals to cover the Month of December (so we don't have to eat Pizza every night). I know that we won't use all thirty in December but having some freezer/crock pot meals into January will make for a Happy New Year.   I will try to share many of my freezer recipes in another post.
*2.  I want to start shopping earlier this year and give more home made gifts.  Again I will share with you some homemade gift ideas in another post.

*3.  Instead of the 12,000 gifts our children received from us last year, many of which they don't care about anymore, our children will receive 3-4 quality gifts each.  After purchasing all of those gifts we watched an advent video series in Sunday School that talked about really scaling back Christmas and maybe not even giving gifts.  I don't think we can go that far...we already gave up Halloween, but I do think that we need to be more intentional about our gift giving.  We haven't decided yet if we are giving  four gifts something you want, something you need, something you wear, and something you read or give the Three Wise Men Gifts...Gold (the bigger gift they really want) frankincense (a Spiritual Gift), myrrh (something for their bodies...perfume, clothing or also perfect for my back up socks and underwear plan :)  You can read more about the Three Gift plan here.
*4. Another thought is to re purpose items from the past and make them new again.  Our oldest two have so much great stuff.  They were the first grandchildren on my side and well lets just say that first Christmas, we had to make more than one trip home WITH OUR TRUCK.  When they were little, both Monte and I worked lots of hours to provide them with all the stuff they could ever need (I type that sarcastically while shaking my head...we were so misguided).  Much of the stuff is still good it just needs a bit of TLC.  For example our oldest daughter had an old, but sturdy, rocker that needs to be recovered with maybe a black and pink Zebra print or something flashy and voila there is a gift that our two year old would absolutely LOVE.  Another great gift would be batteries.  Soooooooooooo many toys in our house would be new again with batteries.  We buy a couple of jumbo packs a month around here but we never have enough for everything.

*5.  Start Deep Cleaning Now.  Normal Monday house cleaning will continue but we will add on a few rooms of deep cleaning each week.  With so many children, our house never stays completely clean but deep cleaning lasts a long time.  Things like dusting ceiling fans, cleaning light fixtures, scrubbing and straightening cabinets etc.  My plan is to divide deep cleaning of the whole house into eight weeks and to finish before Christmas. 

So that's it in a nutshell.  I want to be present this year instead of focusing on all the presents.  I want to work ahead so that I can make and bake stuff with my kids and enjoy and celebrate the birth of Christ with my kids and focus of the joy instead of the chaos with my kids (and Monte of course).  They won't always remember the presents they got but they will remember the time that we spent together.  Picture being there to celebrate Christmas through the eyes of a one and a two year old and a six year old who is just discovering the meaning and the true joy of Jesus and traditions that Christmas holds. Imagine celebrating with the bustle and excitement of a house with five beautiful blessings.  That's my Christmas Wish...What's Yours?