I don’t know about you, but this Christmas seemed to go by in a blink of an eye this year. Weeks before Christmas, I was scrambling to get gifts together while hubs was finishing his first semester of med school (post about that to come later). This was our first year celebrating Christmas without any family around. Part of me was thinking that might make it more relaxing- no trucking all over the place – 2 hours here, 3 hours there. But, on the other hand, what could possibly be fun and memorable for the kids? I mean for us – hubs and me – it’s a little less magical than when we were younger. I remember having such fond memories of Christmas as a child. Time with family, Christmas lights, candlelight services at church, Christmas carols, and the list goes on. For our kids, they know that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus and we’ve had great traditions with our church to celebrate. We’ve just never had a steady tradition for our home celebration. When we lived in Michigan and the boys were really little, we did the driving all over the place thing. Now that we live in Minnesota, it’s not that easy.

So, as we were nearing the holidays and as I began really thinking about what we were going to do this year, I began feeling the pressure. You know, the pressure to make everything so perfect that your kids will brag about how great their Christmas was. Now, we are on a tight budget so I knew that they would not be bragging about crazy iPad/Xbox One/Wii U gifts, I had to “wow” them with an experience. I had that pressure, I’ll call it the Pinterest pressure, mounting. Continue reading →