The Holidays are Coming in Fast

Wow, it has been a crazy few weeks getting ready for the Holidays. Last week my two older kids were both pretty sick along with my husband. I was pretty lucky that the baby and I didn’t get sick. Hopefully we wont get sick before the Holiday! This is the first year that we are staying home as a family, and my family is coming to visit us this year.

We have tried to get some finishing touches done on the house so that we are not in the middle of a construction zone for the Holiday. Once again we had to stop before we got finished with the kitchen project, but we got closer to finishing. We finally got our gutters up…we actually hired some one to do that. Our house has been with out gutters since we re-sided the house last November. My husband thought that he would do it ourselves, but in the end we decided it would be better left to the professionals. It was a lot like when we were working on our bathroom…we spent a month staring at the gutted bathroom with nothing but a commode before we realized that we need to actually call a plumber. That was a pretty good choice on our part. After spending enough time looking at the house and everything that needs to still be done we decided to have some one come and do our gutters. That was defiantly a good choice!! They are going to come back later this week and install the last of the windows & we will finally have all the windows in the house replaced! I am hoping that our heating bill will drop a bit!

We couldn’t wait for the window to be replaced though to get our Christmas tree. Since we have never stayed home for the Holidays, we have never had a tree. The kids are so freaking excited. We drove all over the place before we found a tree farm that actually had trees over 3 feet tall! We found a place on the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains along The Blue Ridge Parkway. After going to two different farms and trying to figure out where to go next we were sitting on top of the mountain getting ready to cross the Parkway when 2 cars came along with trees tied to the tops. I managed to get my window down quick enough to flag one of the cars down and we got the directions to the tree farm. Of course it made so much sense…Frazier Furs grow the best at high altitudes. It was one of those epiphany moments! The kids had so much fun running thru the trees and helping to find the perfect tree. It’s funny because the tree was on just the slightest slope, so it was standing straight on the farm, but now our tree leans to the left a bit. I will remember that for next year.

Last year after Christmas I hit all the stores that sell decorations, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Kmart & Wal-Mart and got everything for 75% OFF!! It was such a good idea! We had to just about start from scratch with our decorations. Every year the kids get a few ornaments, but we have never had anywhere to put them because we always leave. I could never bring myself to put up a tree if we were not even going to be here. I did get a few ornaments this year, but not much for my money. I can’t wait for the after Christmas sales this year!! I am going to be ready for the deals. Last year I got enough icicle lights to decorate the outside of the house for less than it would cost to buy just one box of lights. I was also able to get boxes and boxes of the basic glass bulbs for the tree along with lots of the more expensive ornaments. We would have had a pretty bare tree if I had to get everything new this season. All that really matters is that my children are happy and having a fantastic holiday!