I’m on the cusp of four really crazy weeks. My in-laws arrived yesterday and we’re going to spend a few glorious days at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. Next week, I’m off to Park City Mountain Resort and right after I return, I will be speaking at a single adult fireside and will also MC a “What Not to Wear” event for Young Women in Excellence (don’t ask me if I’ve ever watched the show). Oh, and then I’m appearing on 9News with all my holiday picks (and still need to wrap up the gift guide), and we’re then whisking the kiddos off for a surprise four-day trip, which will result in a lot of subsequent writing deadlines.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget all the holiday shopping that goes with it.
So, I’m kinda busy.
I am not a procrastinator and hate leaving things until the last minute. If I were to wait until the week before Christmas to shop or put up decorations, it wouldn’t happen. This year, I have taken a now-or-never approach and last week was dedicated to getting Christmas cards ready. Traditionally, we set-up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving but since we’ll be MIA, I announced we’d do it on Sunday. Yes, for you stalwart DO NOT DECORATE UNTIL AFTER THANKSGIVING-TYPES, this was four days before T-day. And with the amount of decorations we have, it takes hours. 
This isn’t even including our outdoor decorations, which we’ll hold off on for another week.
Jamie is a Grinch when it comes to decorating and limits his efforts to the outdoor lights. But this year when I hesitatingly asked if he and Bode could be in charge of putting up the tree, I was shocked when he agreed. I’ve been a longtime advocate of real trees but after several years of choosing ones that lose their needles mere days after purchase, we went artificial (it helped when my in-laws gifted us their old tree). There’s a definite system to putting on the branches and I usually organize them in piles and systematically start from the bottom (longest) and work my way up.
The boys had a different system, which is a nice way of saying they had no system at all. A half-hour later, I walked into the room to find the mostly-completed tree with a large gaping hole in the middle and several small branches still on the ground. Problem was all the slots at the top were taken.
Wives everywhere know this is the ultimate dilemma. How do you handle it when you FINALLY get your husband to do something and it is not done correctly? The answer: you tread very lightly with your criticism otherwise they’ll never do it again. 
Ultimately they figured it out.
We got in the Christmas spirit by baking this snickerdoodle bread with cinnamon chips and blasted Josh Groban’s CD “Noel.” I’m relieved the bulk of the work is done and to the naysayers like Jamie who say we’re not allowed to decorate until Thanksgiving, this Canuck says IT ALREADY HAPPENED IN OCT.
The end.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 