December Challenge: Holiday Survival and Thrival

When you're a mommy, time tends to fly by and things have a way of sneaking up on you in a whole new sort of way. Case in point - it's December. What?!

Last week I decided to sit down and make a list of all of the traditions I want to establish for our new little family. It's a pretty long list, so here's a portion of it to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

1. See A Christmas Carol
2. See The Nutcracker
3. Go to a parade
4. See Santa
5. Advent calendar
6. Annual video of kids
7. Wrapping gifts for family members with kids
8. Read Aloud Advent Calendar
9. Make a gingerbread house
10. Donate old toys
11. Watch Rudolph, Charlie Brown, The Grinch, and Frosty
12. Watch It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, and National Lampoon's

Whew! It's all great stuff, right? Some of this stuff will have to wait until we're a little older, but you get the picture.

Then there are all the chores and errands associated with the holidays, so I made a To Do list.

Uh oh.

That's a lot of stuff. A lot. And I don't move around all free and willy nilly like I used to.

So I printed out a calendar and started plugging my stuff into it. I now have a calendar with every day filled out with a tradition(s) and/or chore(s) to accomplish. As things happen, I'm checking them off. Sometimes things happen ahead of schedule (gifts bought today - yippee!), and some have to be reshuffled (not enough light to take the Christmas card picture today- boo!), but the calendar helps me feel like I can get it all done.

Now let's talk about the fun stuff.

In search of some ideas for great traditions to establish with the kids, I bought Family Fun Magazine's Christmas issue. It is SO worth it. I got several great ideas, but my favorite one is the Read Aloud Advent Calendar (#8 above). I'm working on building their library of Christmas and Winter-themed books. Eventually we'll have 24. I'll wrap them all up, they'll get to unwrap one for each day in December, and then we'll read the book together. How fun is that?! I'm also planning to make one of the books an activity or coloring book each year... well, not this year... but later.

What about you, readers? What holiday tradition are you super excited about sharing with your little ones this year?