How this Christmas is Different

Megan is hosting her annual Sharing Christmas carnival where bloggers can invite their readers into their homes for a sort of Christmas Open House.   I tend to use the same decorations each year in pretty much the same locations and since I posted on those here last year, I am not going to redo the same post.   Instead I thought I would post on how things are different this year at the circus.

This year we did not get lights hung on the house.  We had very good intentions.  We were going to hang them up the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  And then we were going to cut our tree down on Monday afternoon.  Scott even took a vacation day from work.  But, I checked the weather report on Sunday and it was calling for rain on Monday.  And I decided if we only had one sunny day to work with, the tree was more important than the lights.  Scott attempted to go quickly up on the roof before we headed to the tree farm but the lights weren’t cooperating… as in we didn’t have enough strands of working lights.  And since we were short on time we decided to postpone that task and go for our tree.

Since Scott doesn’t get home from work till after it is dark, we are left with weekends to hang lights.  But, the next weekend it snowed… can’t get on the roof when it is snowing.  Weekend after that it rained.  And THEN this past weekend, it snowed.  So, yea, no lights this year.  We do have our inflatable nativity up though. And this year, unlike last year we have 2 ft of snow in our yard… way more magical than lights, right?

Another way we are different this year is that we haven’t done Christmas cards yet.  Yup, three days till Christmas and I have done NOTHING in regards to Christmas cards.  I used to LOVE doing Christmas cards and would start thinking about them before Thanksgiving.  But I’ll be honest.  Last year we got a few cards, ok newsletters, that made me weep.  Literally weep.  I read about all this stuff these moms were doing with their kids, or to be more accurate, I read what these kids my child’s age were doing and realized that I had been doing none of that with my child.  And I felt guilty and defensive and angry and like a failure.  “Merry Christmas,” huh?  Anyway, it made me think… do my newsletters paint some perfect picture that makes someone else feel awful?  And now that I blog regularly and post status updates multi times a day on face book, don’t all the people that want to know about my life know way  more than they care to about my life?  What more can I say?  And so, I haven’t felt like doing Christmas cards.   And for the first few weeks of December it appeared no one else was doing it either.  Didn’t get a card till mid December and I honestly thought, “Maybe no one wants to do cards this year?”  But, no, people really are sending cards.  On December 18th I said to Scott, “Guess I should start thinking about Christmas cards, huh?” 

It is December 21st and I’ve still got nothing.

I am thinking rather than stress out and throw something together out of obligation, I am going to work on something cute for New Years.  It’s my aim to send something out in January… perhaps a collage of photos from the year with a personal handwritten note at the bottom…sound nice?  This way people will know we’re thinking of them, I can pick some favorite pictures highlighting the year and I can do it during a month that has a lot less activity in it.  Hoping I can bring this idea to fruition. 

Lastly, we have a partially decorated tree.

I love, LOVE our tree.  I love the decorations, I love our star on top, love that we cut it down ourselves, love the way the kids bunch up the candy canes when they put them on the tree, and I love the cranberry and popcorn strands on it. 

Make that strand.

Scott and I started stringing cranberries and popcorn in early December… around the 3rd I think.  Hung up the first two strands and were going to get to it the next night.

Hmmm… I am hoping we finish before the fam all comes for Christmas morning.  (in 3 days) I have no excuse except for laziness.

I guess, if you wanna know how this Christmas is different at the circus, I’d say it is a lot more relaxed.  I’ve had a wonderful December.  We’ve gone to parties, we’ve seen the parade of lights in Annapolis, we walked around at midnight madness, we’ve snuggled on the couch and watched movies, we’ve built and decorated a gingerbread house, baked and eaten cookies and played in a record breaking snowfall.  We’ve made many, wonderful memories. 

And the other stuff? 

I’m not sweating the other stuff. 

So, that’s Christmas this year at the circus.  Thanks for stopping by.  Please stop by Megan’s for a chance to take a peek inside some other bloggers homes this Christmas!