After spending a couple of Christmas's away from home when the kids were little, so little they don't remember, we made the decision to "always" be at our home for Christmas. Family is always welcome but we wanted it to not be so hectic over the holidays. I now tell the kids never to say "always" or "never" because you can never predict how opinions or circumstances change over time.
The kids are getting older now at 12 and 14. We are very aware that we have limited time left in this "stage" of our life and our goal is to expose the kids to as much as we can.
Honestly, I went into this season overwhelmed what all the stuff we "have to do". We have to decorate for Christmas, we have to go Christmas shopping. We all had lots of work to do, the kids had final exams and practices. When we start our day at 6am and end it at 9pm or later sometimes I feel like we are so busy getting stuff done that we are not enjoying the things we are doing.
While it seems "wrong" not to decorate and not to Christmas shop, I just really didn't want to do it just I could check one more thing off our to do list.
The kids started telling us what they want for Christmas a couple of months ago. We are all extremely blessed that we are truly in a position in life where our kids are not truly lacking for anything. Yes they want new gaming systems and a dirt bike but I just didn't have it in my heart to go shopping just to fill presents under the Christmas tree.
Sooo, we have talked about it in the past about just traveling over the Christmas break and this year we decided to go for it. It is not their Christmas "present" it is just what we are doing together as a family.
After talking about some things we could do, we ended up deciding on Washington DC.
I for one am very thankful that Chris has a job where he can take more than a week off at a time so we had a little flexibility in the schedule.
So our plan is to break up the travel a little with a stop in New Orleans, Hattiesburg and Jackson, MS before heading north to Washington DC. We were trying to fit a couple of days in New York in but I think New York will need to be its own vacation will all that I would want to do there.
So the plan is to spend as much time together as possible, teach and talk with the kids as much as we can about the places we are going and the things that we will be doing and just spend time together, talking, playing games and be in the moment.
We did get them each a gift. It was just one and there were no stockings or lots of little things to open this year but we got them things that they will use. I missed taking pictures, so sad but
Ladybug got the new competition air rifle that Daisy designed this year. We saw it at nationals this summer while it was still in the final development stages. There are some other options out there but they each have their pros and cons. She loved this one and we couldn't wait till they got finished with it. They started taking preorders in November and we immediately got one on order. We didn't expect it to come in before Christmas but were pleasantly surprised when it did. She loved it and can't wait to try it out at her next practice!
And for Batman, who didn't have a good case on his phone and I am surprised he was still able to use the thing with as many times as it has been dropped, got his phone fixed and for all practicality has a new phone and a good otterbox on it.
So, all in all, we went for practicality this year with extremely low stress about the whole holiday season. We will evaluate afterwards how we think the holiday went and decide from there about the future but working on enjoying the time we have now. Hope everyone has a special Christmas whether at home or traveling and whether fulfilling old traditions or making new ones!
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