I thought I was ahead of the Christmas season by putting up our tree before we left for Florida the weekend before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, not much else has happened besides decorating the tree and a few strands of lights on the front bushes. Oh, and we put up Ella's little white tree with pink ornaments in her room. I didn't decorate the staircase banister with garland and lights. I didn't hang all my large outdoor ornaments up outside on the trees. I even decided to forgo a fancy evening amongst adults at a Christmas party for the Engineering organization that Andrew is part of. It's not like me to pass up a chance to put on a cocktail dress and wear heels, but it hardly seemed worth the $70 price tag plus another 40-50 dollars for a babysitter when our budget is pretty tight right now. Hopefully next year we will have sold our house and we can enjoy fun dates like that.
So, as I realized Christmas is less than 2 weeks away, I better soak in all the Christmas season I can. I am not the crafty type, but Ella and I have enjoyed cutting out many Christmas trees and snowman out of construction paper and coloring, painting, and adding glitter to our fabulous creations. I even glued three paper plates together and made a huge snowman for her to decorate...that's about as crafty as I get folks.
Because life is still very overwhelming right now, I just can't put the pressure on myself anymore to do all the other things I see mommies doing. However, Andrew and I did each come up with one thing that we wanted to do with Ella this Christmas season. Andrew wanted to make cookies with Ella. I wanted to take her to see The Nutcracker Ballet. Instead of the $75 a ticket at the Fox Theater downtown, we went to a performance by ballet studio that is actually out of our church. It was perfect...$15 for me and Ella was free! Although I look forward to taking her to see the Atlanta Ballet downtown one day, this was a perfect size Nutcracker performance for her age. We loved watching all the ballerinas and Ella has been listening to the Nutcracker c.d. over and over again. I love that she can appreciate instrumental music! Afterwards, we went to Target and she bought a little nutcracker snowglobe that plays the Nutcracker suite when you wind it up. Such a fun mommy/Ella day. My Christmas feels complete after doing that one thing with her.
Andrew equally enjoyed making cookies with his big girl! Here are a few photos of their evening:
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| She caught on very quick |
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| Daddy showing her how to use the rolling pin |
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| The girl loved the sprinkles! |
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| I asked her which cookie cutters were her favorite and after much pondering, she decided the snowman and the Christmas tree were her favorites |
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| Patiently waiting on her creations to finish cooking |
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| Ta-da! |
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| "Thank you Daddy for making cookies with me!" |
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| Just a picture to show I was there too. I can't believe I'm posting a picture of me without makeup and stringy hair, but at least you now know I am completely normal. |
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So, this is my attempt to embrace the Christmas season despite the fact that I might be feeling overwhelmed right now. At the end of the day, it's really all about Jesus. The other stuff is just that...stuff. So, if all I do between now and Christmas is watch all the cheesy Christmas movies on ABC family, then that is good enough.
3 comments:
You actually look super cute in that picture! I never would have guessed you would think you looked bad. Your hair is not stringy at all!
And you are absolutely right. Christmas is about Jesus, and if you're feeling pressure about the other stuff, you need to remind yourself that that stuff DOESN'T MATTER.
I am just happy we put up a tree this year. We didn't put one up for the past two years, so I feel like we're doing good.
it's the simple things. sometimes i think we try to squeeze in too much during the christmas season - when it's all about reflecting on the gift of jesus.
nothing else matters.
praying for you!!
I think you look super cute too! Wow, the Nutcracker for free sounds great. Wish we had that here. Wishing you a wonderful holiday season.
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