It’s the most wonderful time of the year – Christmas Week!

This is what most of our planning has led up to, and it’s finally here. By now, you should have your menu ready, gifts wrapped, house prepared, baking done, stockings hung, and stress gone. 

Our family doesn’t do much for Christmas week. What we focus on is spending quality time together, unplugging from electronics as much as possible, and focusing on the reason for the season. 

We do our best to do most of the Christmas cooking the day before, so we can have a lazy day and do nothing on Christmas. The kids wake up, sort the presents by person, make our traditional cinnamon rolls (store bought, because we attempt to do as little as possible), wake Mom and Dad up when breakfast is ready, and then open gifts in our pajamas. We go around the room, youngest to oldest, opening one at a time. Once the gifts are all open, we spend the day enjoying our Christmas gifts – putting together one of the puzzles we got, reading our new books, watching a new movie, enjoying the day together. 

However your family celebrates Christmas, we want it to be as stress free as possible. 

Here’s a few tips from our large family to have the most stress free Christmas day possible:

• Make as much food as possible the day before, so you just have to reheat it.
• If you don’t care about fancy dishes, just use plastic dishware. Less to clean up!
• Have trash bags ready for gift opening. After each round, all the trash goes into the bags.
• We sort each person’s presents into their laundry basket the night before or that morning. As presents are unwrapped, they go right back into your laundry basket. It contains each person’s items to their own basket, and makes cleanup easier. Plus, it ensures each kid does their laundry before Christmas. 😉 
• Have relaxing music going in the background. 
• Burn a nicely scented holiday candle. 
• Slow the gift opening process as much as possible. Unless you have somewhere you need to be, take the time to thoroughly exclaim over each new present, allow the gift giver to see the pleasure it brings, and allow the proud recipient to show it off to everyone else in the room. 
• Use the timer mode on your phone or camera to capture a few pictures of yourself enjoying the holidays with your loved ones, or ask someone else to take pictures of you. Even if you’re self conscious about the way you look in pictures, your family won’t care. They just want to see you in the memories. 

Don’t forget to focus on what Christmas means to you.  Don’t let the day go by in a rush without focusing on enjoying it. 

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out in the Facebook group and we’ll do our best to answer them. 

Merry Christmas! We’ll see you next week for the last week of our course!

PJ and Brett