Christmastime is Here!

I cannot believe it's a week into December already!  The end of the year always seems to go like this, though.  You make it to Thanksgiving and then time just flies through the holidays.  I'm currently listening to some Christmas music (Nebraska Theater Caravan's "A Christmas Carol"), as it reminds me of seeing this particular production time and time again during my childhood in Omaha.  :-)  Oh, how I loved the man that played Scrooge for years upon years!

Christmas preparation is fully in swing around here.  I've actually wholly impressed myself by having all gifts planned out and a good portion of them bought.  I've got an Amazon cart waiting for my next paycheck, just to spread the love around, ha, and this weekend I'll be going out to wrap up my shopping.  I've managed to do pretty much everything online so far, but for clothes I prefer to buy in person.  I'm getting BF a work shirt and a casual shirt as part of his gifts as well as a shirt each for my mom and stepdad.  Beyond that I just need to pick up a couple of Christmas cards and after that...I think I will be done!  I used to be such a last minute shopper, but I've found that preparing and shopping early just makes the holiday season a lot easier.

I'm still deciding if I want to do Christmas cards.  I used to do them religiously, but then I got off track somewhere.  I'm considering it, but I want to do a more limited list.  However, I think that's where I get thrown off each year because the list grows longer than I'd hoped.  We'll see!

This weekend was nice.  We didn't do very much, but J and I did invest a small patch of  time into building and decorating a gingerbread house kit.  It was fun and is cute enough, but we definitely did not miss our calling with this kind of stuff.  ;-)



We will have J for only a half weekend this coming weekend, which would normally be fine. However, her mom asked yesterday to keep her for the following weekend since she'll be staying with us for the week of Christmas.  Kind of a bummer since we were planning a cookie baking, holiday movie watching event that weekend, but I guess we'll have to re-evaluate our schedule.  I think we'll try to bake some cookies this coming half weekend, as we have her until 6 on Saturday, and maybe watch a Christmas movie on Friday night or Saturday during the cookies.  We'll make it work.  :-)

Currently I have scheduled off December 23 and 24, with December 25 being the holiday.  However, I decided this morning to request Tuesday, December 22nd as well.  It would be nice to have an extra day to hang out with BF & J, and also to have more time to pack and get ready for my trip the next day.  Yes, it seems a bit silly to just work Monday, and I thought about asking for that as well, but I know that it's easier for my supervisor to stomach if I'm there to get everything in order on Monday. Plus, I also asked about leaving at noon on New Year's Eve since my firm doesn't close early on that day, and I didn't want to be asking for too much all at once.  ;-)  Crossing fingers this request goes through!

So this weekend I started watching "Master of None" on Netflix.  I am loving Aziz Ansari and I can't wait to watch more!  I'm four episodes into the ten episode season.  We also watched the first 2 episodes of "Jessica Jones" on Netflix, and I'm really enjoying that one as well!  I've always liked Krysten Ritter, so that was the first draw for me, but she's playing a totally different type of character than I'm used to with her.  It's another one I'm looking forward to getting more into!

Right now I'm definitely in that frame of mind where I'm just excited about the holidays and work seems like an inconvenience.  :-p  This Thursday night is my firm holiday party and I'm really looking forward to making up for last year when I was coming down with the flu, unbeknownst to me.  We have booked a hotel in Alexandria to crash in post-party to avoid having to drive all the way back to the house.  I would have preferred staying at the party location in DC, but they took too long to send out the discounted rates and honestly, they're still pretty pricy for a place to sleep, even if it is right next door to the office.  :-)

Anyway, I feel like the holiday party is the real start of the Christmas whirlwind.  I'm excited to get dressed up, get my hair done and have a good time with my friends, coworkers and BF.  I got some super cute new earrings from Etsy that I will debut that evening as well.  I do have to work on the Friday after, but that day is historically pretty light around the office, so it's not too bad.

I guess I need to try to rein in the distractions and focus for a couple of more weeks!  At least there will be fun things interspersed in there until Christmas to keep me entertained.  Cheers to December and all of it's accompanying chaos!  :-)