My New Years Resolution

This year I have one solitary New Years Resolution. It is not in the typical lose weight or budget finances categories. I went "high raw/vegan" back in October, and have always been good about exercising daily so I've lost 13 lbs recently. Cory and I came up with a budget in November and have managed to stick to it even through the financial stress of Christmas. However, there is one area in which I am HORRIBLE! Embarassingly so...

I am horrible at bringing the Christmas Spirit into my home during the Christmas Season.

I know, I know... and yes I AM terribly ashamed of this.

For my years as a bachelorette and my years married without children to a man who hasn't really been "in to" Christmas since he was a kid, perhaps this was acceptable. However, now we (which really translates into me since Cory still isn't "in to" Christmas) are solely responsible for creating that magical, warm and happy spirit for another precious human being that WILL be "in to" Christmas. We will be responsible for finding a balance between the magic of Santa (though I'm still conflicted on what to do about Jolly Ol' Saint Nick) and presents and the real gift of the season, celebrating our Saviour's birth. This is a part of parenting I hadn't even thought of being afraid of or planning for but I am quite overwhelmed by the responsibility of it.

Growing up my parents did a great job creating the Christmas spirit every year. Such a great job that I became 100% reliant on them to make Christmas fun and magical. I didn't realize this, however, until my first Christmas out of the house came around. I was completing my first semester of college, studying furiously for finals when all of the sudden the semester ended and BAM! a few days later it was Christmas. I was devastated! I was used to Christmas celebrations beginning December 1st and lasting until the 31st. I was used to decorations around the house, decorating the tree, advent calendars, the smell of pine and cinnamon twists in my home, presents under the tree, etc. Left to my own devices, however, I forgot to decorate my dorm (and didn't have any of my own decorations anyway) and I put off shopping until the last minute leaving myself with only a few days to stress shop for everyone on my list. It was the most miserable Christmas ever. When it was over, I promised myself I would never allow school to get the better of my Christmas season...

Yeah, well so much good that did! Here I am... lets say just a "few" years later... and I STILL let life, work, household responsibilities and stress get the better of my Christmas season. So this year my resolution is to finally make good on the promise I made myself after Christmas 1998 (okay, okay, so it has been more than just a few years since then ;).

To tackle this more general resolution I have broken it down into several goals:

• Purchase more Christmas decorations on clearance after Christmas this year. (Tough right now since money is SUPER tight but I'm trying to do my best.)
  

• Decide on how to (if at all) encourage belief in Santa Clause without taking away from the real reason we celebrate Christmas. I honestly can't believe I am even considering not encouraging a belief in Santa but parenthood does strange things to you... like making you understand where your parents were coming from! I was raised with Santa but thanks to my snooping best friend in 1st grade discovered that Santa wasn't real at age 5 so I really don't remember a Christmas believing in Santa Clause. (I would love to hear others thoughts on this as I am sitting on the fence right now. My Dad's vote is no Santa.)


• Start 1-3 of our own family traditions to help make Christmas special and magical. Some ideas I've thought of include 1. studying the way Christmas is celebrated in one country each year, decorating, celebrating and eating food traditional for that country 2. sponsoring a needy family each year and being their Santa Claus 3. Individual advent calendars for each child (this is actually an idea I am copying from my MIL). Again, I would love to hear from others some fun Christmas tradition ideas that you don't mind sharing and don't mind if I may copy!
  

Well, I better start getting ready for Christmas 2010! In the mean time, though, here are pictures from Christmas 2009:

Me and River in front of my parent's Christmas tree (we spent Christmas at my parent's house)

Getting ready to open gifts

Still waiting to open gifts while River shows off his standing and walking abilities.

River opening a few of his presents.

River playing with my favorite gift we got him!

Grumpy Cory (we only got a couple hours of sleep on Christmas Eve) and River.

My niece Tessa's "stink eye." Don't upset her unless you want to see this face:

The crickets and meal worms my brother bought my sister as a gag gift. The meal worms are cheddar flavored and the crickets are sour cream and onion. Mmmm...

For fun we decided to actually eat them and have our own little Christmas Fear Factor. Here is the before...

And after...

To be honest, the weren't really that bad! Just tasted like stale Cheetos or something like that.

Best wishes to everyone and their New Years Resolutions!