Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Checking it twice...

You may have noticed, I really love Christmas.  Not just December 25th.  I love the whole holiday season.  My jump off point is Thanksgiving.  I almost feel that Thanksgiving dinner is a relaxing day before jumping feet first into the madness that is the Christmas season.  It's not just the retailed up Christmas day, I love Advent and St. Nick's all the way through to the Epiphany.  For those of you who are not familiar with those three things, Advent is a liturgical season.  December 6th is the feast day of St. Nicholas, in many cultures it is a celebrated day.  When I grew up in Wisconsin, our neighbors introduced my mom to St. Nick's as a way to get the Christmas list from the kids and leave a little something in the stockings in return.  Some people use shoes instead of stockings.  Then the Epiphany is the 12th day of Christmas, when the Wise Men finally show up to visit Jesus and his parental units.  Traditionally Christmas is supposed to be celebrated from Dec. 25th through Jan. 6th.  However, because everyone is so burnt out from seeing Christmas decorations sense sometime in September, Christmas is done by about 6pm on the 25th.  (Okay, I'm done with my history lesson.)

This year I am determined to get my shopping done relatively early.  Especially with Pookie in tow.  Plus, I need to mail stuff out, and it would be nice if things actually made it to there destinations by Christmas.  I don't have the excuse that I'm working in retail this year.  So the other day I took stock of what I had purchased already and figured out what I still needed to get.  I realized that my list was a little longer than I thought.  Oops.  The best day to go shopping is Tuesday, because Tuesday's are the quietest day of the week.  So I shoved Pookie into his car seat, and off we went.  Poor kid, I had him all over the place.  Anytime he squawked, I would give him a snack.  That seemed to appease the crankiness.  After dragging him to at least 8 different stores and about 6 hours later, we finally made it home.  I am almost all done, I just need two more items and I am all set.  I just need to wrap up the goods and make a trip to the post office, and I am good to go.  My hubby on the other hand, has one gift.  The one I bought for myself and told him to give to me from Pookie.  I'm not too worried, Rob is an excellent Christmas Eve shopper!

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