Christmas is almost here!!

When I think of all the things I wanted to get done before Christmas, and then look at the list of things I actually did get done, I laugh a little. I did do Christmas cards, we did get a tree and decorate it (which is now dead and will be leaving Saturday morning before it burns the house down), and I did get everyone some presents. Mainly Tori, since I don't "need" presents, and John is leaving in a little over a week and can't really use many things. We are going to order him the Barnes and Noble "Nook" which is their digital reading device (similar to the Amazon.com Kindle, but with the rights to thousands more books) since he will have access to internet and will be able to down load new books whenever he finishes the one he's on. But, they are back ordered until the 21st, so, I'll have to ship it out to him with one of his care packages.

The things I didn't get done were take pictures with Santa, build a "deployment" album (this will hopefully go into his first care package now) with pictures of Tori, me, and then the few pictures we have of the whole family, and go shopping/plan for a Christmas dinner. I do have a steak in the freezer I can defrost... Haha. I suppose that will have to do. And I can make a Swedish Tea Roll for Christmas morning, but, other than that, my family is out of luck. There just isn't enough money to do everything. I'm thinking about putting $20/month away into a Christmas fund for next year. That way we're not scrambling around trying to budget an extra couple hundred dollars out of the final months of the year. Since, well, that money just isn't there.

Either way, Tori still isn't really old enough to remember EVERYTHING, so, if we are still acting like our age (AKA irresponsible) this year and haven't figured it all out yet, she won't know. Starting this next year though, I'm going to have to be on top of things a lot more (including housework, shoot me now please). I'm not sure how I feel about that. It will be fun to make cookies for Santa and give carrots to his reindeer, but, it makes more work for me. Since, we all know John won't be the one baking cookies.