I need Christmas spirit... someone send me a bottle of wine, please.

Well, Christmas 2008 just ain't hitting me. Typically, the family pictures and Christmas cards done by now. The stockings are hung by the chimney with care usually before Thanksgiving.

So far I've done the following:

• Collected all the Thanksgiving decorations but they are sitting on the washing machine waiting to be put away. Which means I've also got about 4 loads of laundry just sitting there screaming, "Help me. Help me".
• I got our family pictures and was intent on getting our cute cards but at $6/each from this photographer, I just thought, wow, I could buy food for starving kids with that (which we did!).
  So now I have to find pictures for cards. I could attempt to do so like My Life as a Mombie. But I think I'd rather pull my lungs out. Through my nose.
• Got out some Christmas tins for the kitchen, placemats for Sydney's table and that's all I have energy for.
• Sydney wrote her first Dear Santa letter. Well, she did the "Dear Santa" and "Sydney". I wrote the rest, a blog entry for later.
• Decided to regift a doll I gave Sydney last year for Christmas. She never played with it and I'm going to gamble that she doesn't remember it since I packed it away last January.
  
  

So what now? A tree? ugh. Stockings? Overrated. Maybe it's just the horrible cold I have but I just want to skip over Christmas this year. Ethan's too young to get it anyway.

The real issue is free time. What's that you say my fellow mom's? Free time?? Isn't that some ancient mythical creature of long ago? Apparently.

Yes.... When Sydney was 3, I felt like I could do Christmas appropriately (she is my little helper for about 5 minutes but at least she didn't require contstant attention). When she was 4 and Ethan was born, I flew my mom out to help decorate! This year... I'd have to take time off work to decorate.

Thank goodness for Sydney's paper chain from school hanging on the window else I'd have to start explaining to Sydney that Green and Red are overrated and the nice Taupe color of our house is the "new Christmas color theme."