So, we made gingerbread cookies tonight. My daughter insisted on red and green icing and snowflake, candy cane and gingerbread man cutters. I get the man ones, but the other ones were so Christmasy. She is definitely her mom’s daughter:) I am the kind of person who decorates for Valentine’s, Easter, the 4th, for every birthday mine and hers and Halloween and obviously,Christmas. My daughter’s theater production in D.C. was pretty major and took up a couple of months, and went on until the middle of December and I was also sick and I was finishing up another degree. All of these reasons combined are how we got “behind” on Christmas.

So, I know I can’t ‘make up” for missing the Nutcracker. We were both too sick to go and all of the shows have packed up until next Christmas. So, we had gingerbread stuff unused and turned the Christmas tree on and started making cookies tonight. They turned out pretty good, but we are going to give most of them away. We have baked so much during Christmas. But since I am such a stickler for traditions, we had to scratch this off of the list before totally giving up one of the last vestiges of Christmas.

I have an adoration for my tree. Each ornament is very special to me. They are either from my childhood, or my daughter made them, my daughter is on them, or they are just plain beautiful. I love to turn it on every night and mellow out before falling asleep. but I have a BIG confession. One of the biggest reasons that I have the tree up right now is, it is so hard to get the lights off, the ornaments take forever to put away because there are over a hundred, and storing the tree is a major pain in the a–.

So as much as I am in love with the Christmas season and the beauty of the reason behind it, part of me not telling Christmas goodbye is because I don’t want to tell with the cleanup. I was listening to Christmas music yesterday with 5 little girls singing along, so I am not the only one who can’t let go of the spirit. My daughter actually has a tree up in her room all year-long and we have it decorated in her favorite things and colors that match her room and her personality but none of the ornaments are red or green or Christmas in nature. I have been toying with the idea of shoving our 6 feet artificial in the corner and decorating it for each holiday. But that means more money spent on ornaments, and more stuff and I can’t stand a lot of “stuff”.

So, when I get back from my journey up 95 North, I will start to take the ornaments off over a couple of days and then spend a day on the ridiculous light job that I did. I think I will keep the tree up though until I can order a tree bag for it. How the hell do people get their trees back in the original boxes? Bungees? The help of super heroes? I can’t do it. I am an intelligent woman who is pretty self-sufficient, but getting a Christmas tree back into its original box stumps me. There is also the problem that I got rid of said box last year out of frustration, so I couldn’t put it in the box even if I was talented enough to because it was long ago recycled.

Though my place has the lingering of some snowflake plug-ins, a snowman sign and a let it snow picture, Christmas is on its way out of my place.:( But the way the weather has been, snowflake accessories or not, it looks as though winter is here to stay for quite awhile!