Christmas Shopping Already??

Well, Andrew will be coming home tonight to a Money Meeting. I already emailed him to give him a warning. We need to talk about our large copay for Phoebe that will be coming up right after Christmas and we need to work out a Christmas budget now. I'm hoping that if I buy one gift at a time each week, I won't have to put aside a "budget" for it. If I can throw it in there with grocery shopping, I might be able to have a relatively pain-free Christmas. I'm thinking of asking Andrew if we can do a teeny tiny gift to each other and not worry about big gifts, as we just bought a large house and are expecting a baby 6 weeks after the holidays. A "no-gift" year would make a lot of sense to me. I would guess that a lot of couple with young families often do "no-gift" Christmases. We've only done a couple of really big gift holidays, since we went from a wedding to a baby to grad school to a new house in less than 3 years. I think maybe this year we'll do thoughtful cards and stockings and concentrate more on a really fun Christmas Day with Lucy. I can't decide what Lucy would really like this year. She's such a baby freak, but I'd really like to get her set up with a Fisher Price kitchen and a bunch of play food. Ideally, I'd love to have Andrew build her a little countertop and "stove" and maybe a fridge to put right here in the kitchen so that she can work while I work. She go nuts if she had a little miniature workspace. Of course, I'd be forced to bake sugar cookies at knee-level with her...I'll keep thinking. I'm thinking something like this or this.
We're going to be here in our house with Lucy for Christmas morning, and I know Andrew is just over the moon excited about that. I know that we each have traditions we'd like to start in our own family and Lucy is going to be a blast this year. We even have a mantel for stocking to hang on! I have a spot all picked out for the Christmas tree. I just haven't told Andrew that he's going to have to rearrange the living room again. Whoopsie.
I know that this year I want to take Lu to Rocky Gap for the light display, I want to deliver cookies to all of our friends and loved ones up here and I want to plan a unique Christmas dinner. I am also fully in favor of tearing into gifts on Christmas morning. We'll be doing Mass on Christmas Eve, but definitely not Midnight Mass. I think we'll save that for when everyone has turned 5 and is a little more reasonable. I'm really hoping for a white Christmas this year, because we have nowhere to go. I think instead of a gift on Christmas Eve, I'd like to save a gift for Christmas night, as sort of a farewell to Christmas. It's always a downer when the stockings are empty, the sugar high is gone and the gifts are all unwrapped. I'd like to save one last gift for just before bed, so that the anticipation lasts all day. I'm also going to watch White Christmas and cry, because that's how I like to spend the holidays. I also watch it every single time it comes on between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Well, I have to go get my makeup on and get my hair did before Lucy gets up and we head out to the Queen City Transportation Museum. Today is the first day of "Cumberland Goes To War," a week-long WWII event that's going on in our area. I'm hoping to take Lucy to almost every event. The only thing I haven't gotten Andrew's commitment on is a train ride with FDR and Patton. How would that not be AWESOME?? Pictures later!