Merry Christmas!

*video courtesy of youtube and ThisPerfectPlace.

Eek! The Year is Almost Over.

I just looked at my calendar and realized that after this week my next two blogs fall on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. My first thought was where has the time gone? And my next one was something along the lines of holy crap, I’m almost out of time.

It’s been a crazy year. An insane year. And I don’t know about all of you, but 2013 has been kind of a big deal for me and my family. Lots of interesting and wonderful growth and change and major life events. And I’m hoping—seriously hoping—that 2014 will be just as awesome.

That said, I have a few goals left to accomplish, which means I better get on them, fast. So for the next three weeks, please forgive me for taking some much needed time off from blogging and instead posting inspirational holiday clips or images for your entertainment.

I’ll be back in January to talk about goals, resolutions, and my plans for 2014. Happy holidays!

*Video courtesy of Youtube and PTXofficial.

I love this video, and hope the artists don't mind my sharing. If you're looking for a unique and awesome holiday album, they have one for purchase on iTunes.

Holiday Shopping: The Making of a Tradition (Part II)

Sleep was tough to find that night, as I dreamed fitfully of the possibility that the store would run out of my prized items before I could get my hands on them. When my alarm went off in the wee hours of morning, I dressed with shaking hands, bundling in easily removable layers, and prepared to do battle in an arena I had experienced once before—only this time, the stakes were much higher than socks.

My child’s Christmas joy was on the line. (Or so I believed.)

Armed with hot chocolate and hand warmers, we lined up outside, in a crowd that was already much bigger than I had anticipated, and my stomach sank a little lower. If only a handful of these people wanted the same item I was after, I might walk away empty handed. But we stood in line, laughing and joking with our fellow shoppers, and secretly plotting how we would maximize our time. When the doors opened, the crowed gushed forward, leaving me no choice but to flow with traffic, and before I knew it, I was inside and running for my designated section.

After hours of waiting in a line that had felt miles and miles long, I somehow managed to snag the FIRST of my most important item. Hugging it to my chest, I then zoomed around the store, loading up on other necessary (and a few unnecessary) holiday items, before meeting up with my co-shopper at the front of the store for more planning and to move on to the next stores.

The shopping high was better than any drug. Or, at least, I assume so. (I wouldn’t really know.)

Ever since then, Black Friday shopping has been a family tradition. These days, my kids are much older, and my daughters have caught the crazy-shopper bug. The truth is, my kids rarely remember the gifts they receive on Christmas morning. Instead, they remember our time spent together making traditions.

That chaos of shopping has long since ceased to be about things, or money, but has become about spending time together. And that’s a tradition I’m happy about.

What are some of your favorite traditions?

Holiday Shopping: Chaos and Glory (Part 1)

When I was a young newlywed, the women in my husband’s family convinced me to attempt a holiday shopping trip on Black Friday.* Being young and naïve, and having been raised by a woman who had worked way more than her share of retail holiday madness sales, this was not something I had ever done, nor had I desire to try. 

But I was new in the family, and it felt like an effort I needed to make, so I woke up in the middle of the night and bundled myself to stand in line in sub-zero temperatures. All in the name of socks (because, apparently, starting at the Fred Meyer 50% off sock sale was part of the tradition).

I will admit that first year, with the socks, I really didn’t see the point. I mean, yes, we were stone broke (which might have been part of my problem, come to think of it) but even then it didn’t seem worth the effort to save two or three dollars on socks.

Fast forward a few years. Money was tight, and I had little children who had high hopes that Santa would bring them special gifts they’d asked for—and one of those gifts felt nearly out of reach to me. It was our year to have Thanksgiving with my husband’s family, and after the dinner dishes were done and the food was put away, the women crowded around the table thumbing through the newspaper ads.

Not wanting to be anti-social, I joined them, and picked up an ad for a big chain store. Low and behold, there, on the front page of the ad, was the very-expensive-almost-unattainable gift my oldest son wanted so badly, offered at a much more manageable price than I ever expected to find it. In fact, it was about half the price I’d seen it on other days, making the unattainable gift seem somehow, maybe, possibly attainable.  

A small flame of possibility sparked inside me, fanned by the crazy women surrounding me (and I mean crazy in the most endearing way possible) and before we left that evening, my sister-in-law and I had made a plan. We would go to that store, and we would purchase that gift—and others.

To be continued…

*In case you don’t know what Black Friday is, it’s the day after Thanksgiving, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, and the day business managers hope to sell enough merchandise to put those businesses in the black for the year.