October is Christmas Awareness Month

Only 69 days until Christmas. Oh dear. If I want to enjoy the holidays (which is the point, right?) then I need to get shopping, planning and making lists of all I want to get done with before Thanksgiving.

This year I am determined  not to get stressed out by Christmas. The difference this year is I’m on vacation this week so I can go shopping in the mornings while my brain is fairly active (in a good way). I did not take vacation to do Christmas shopping, but since I have an assistant this week (who loves to go shopping), I can use this to my advantage.

My granddaughter, Phoenix, and I get to hang out together maybe once a year if I can take vacation during one of her school breaks. We missed the summer break this year and I thought our “week” would have to wait until Easter or next summer when I retired. Yes, I know I’m too young to retire, but that is another blog post…

I don’t remember having “Fall Break” when I was in second grade. A week off school in October? A couple days in November during Teacher Parent Conferences was all we got and we were excited about that, believe me. Anyway, Phoenix came home with us when we left my daughter’s yesterday afternoon. The back seat of hubby’s F-150 was filled with our weekend bags, a pink suitcase, a princess tote bag (full of dress-up clothes), homework papers stuffed in my knitting bag, etc. We had to use a crowbar to get Phoenix into her booster chair secured in the middle of all the “stuff”. I should have taken a picture, but who knew where the camera was?

So, back to today. The plan is to grocery shop because I am out of everything. First we should plan some meals so we know what to shop for. And cut out coupons for items we plan to buy.

After we return home and put the groceries away (many more than were on our list), we are off to the library because we are bored with the reading material around here. Now that Phoenix is a good reader, we will look for a chapter book to read together. I’m hoping to find the chapter book series that my dad used to read to me & my sister -“The Happy Hollisters”. I loved those books! If Phoenix doesn’t like them I may have to read them to myself.

After the library, we will have our lunch, watch some TV, and relax. Grandma may will definitely need a nap at this point because she is up early writing this post and coffee is not kicking in like I want it to.

So, when is this Christmas shopping going to happen? Oh, we will start today. I have many, many mail-order catalogs to shop in at our leisure. We usually find all kinds of things that we would love to have too. Good thing we can restrain ourselves.

Since it’s time to start preparing supper, we decide that we will begin our “live” shopping tomorrow. Or not. We might think of something else to do instead. You never know with us. 😉