Our holiday frenzy is occurring at high speed lately. Last week, I gave you my priority list, which we are sticking with for the most part. We are almost finished with our shopping and hope to have the rest of our gifts in the mail by tomorrow.

We did our Christmas card shoot over the weekend, (which everyone dreads at the time but we remember fondly as time goes by). We put in our photo orders and I am putting the finishing touches on a few handmade gifts. We are using our gift spreadsheet primarily at the moment to track shipping on all the gifts we have ordered.

We are tired.

We still have not done our decorating yet and hope to get started on that this week. It is probably one of the more fun tasks of the season. Once we lose the shopping burden we hope to be able to pause a bit more to enjoy the countdown to Christmas.

At this point, we have to decide on when to cut off our own shopping. I am tempted to say we are done except for stocking stuffers but we have a big online cart we would have to jettison. It is so easy to keep adding more and more and more. I keep saying to myself, “That is enough! You don’t have to buy it all right now!”

This week my priorities are:

1) Finish all handmade items.
2) Finish any online shopping.
3) Mail all presents and cards that need mailing.
4) Decorate
5) Decide on menus.

One of the relaxing things I have been doing with my children amongst all this hubbub is to sit and read. We pulled out all the Christmas books from years past and also reserved some items from the library. When we went to pick up our reserve books, we were shocked at the emptiness of the shelves. Normally they are packed full of everyone’s requests. I mentioned this to a library and she commented that the librarians were puzzled at the lack of interest too. “Everyone must be out shopping.”

Shopping indeed. Yesterday at our local Wal-Mart I saw these signs.

It was hard to believe that so many people have used layaway plans this Christmas that there is a need to alphabetize the pick-up process by last name! Unless you also have a layaway to pick up, you may want to avoid the Wal-Mart service counter until after the 16th. And if you are still looking for the latest hot toys, you might have another shot after the 16th from people forfeiting their layaways.  A friend recently shared a heartwarming story about strangers anonymously paying off layaways for families in need.

Phew! How are you doing with your holiday preparations? Please share in the comments.

Fun holiday links:

• SnackGirl’s Healthy “Santa Hat” holiday treats
• The Red & Black sisters take on how to cope with being overwhelmed at the holidays.
• Perhaps the “perfect” Christmas classroom from La Classe Della Maestra Valentina (All in Italian. I have no idea what it says but the artwork and crafts are gorgeous!)
• Also, a great post from my Uncle John about the Hispanic celebration of December 12.