I mentioned that our Holidays haven’t gone as planned, right? Heck, here I am scrambling just to write about it before the year ends, and it’s exhausting.

I think it all started with Halloween. Or maybe we just overshot. Period.

MAYBE flying to Hawaii the day after our wedding anniversary / Halloween was ambitious. Though we DID both go out to dinner with friends to celebrate our anniversary (thanks, Chan & Joe), AND we went trick or treating on Halloween night (thanks, Ruth & Bernie!).

The next morning we hopped on a plane to Maui, came home for about a week and a half, then headed to GA for Thanksgiving.  In between and after there was travel, as you know (Portland, London and Boston – over 57 hours on planes in 5 weeks), we bought a minivan and got a Christmas tree the day after we got home from Atlanta (see below for sneak peek of minivan AND tree):

You gotta love a blue sky Christmas. We even remembered the Elf on the Shelf (though she did get “extra comfy” in a couple of spots and refused to move for a few days):

And we sat on Santa’s lap, twice:

Things SEEMED to be going OK, until I realized that Christmas was just 2 weeks away, and I had missed a few steps:

1. I pride myself on being one of the FIRST Christmas cards you’ll get every season. This year, I was writing/sending cards the weekend before Christmas…
2. Um, TGFA? Thank Goodness for Amazon.com! If not for Amazon Prime, most of the Christmas gifts I DID order would never have made it on time.
3. Double Um, I think I was supposed to get something for my husband?
4. Oh, and I make a photo calendar every year for my mom’s family – I haven’t missed a year in 15 years. Until this year. Don’t worry, I haven’t given up! There’s still hope in January for a comeback.
5. I forgot about the Santa Factor: What to do about SANTA when you travel with a small child who is very much interested in Santa…

For number 5, let’s put it this way: Santa is REALLY SMART and super organized! Did you know that Santa KNOWS that lots of kids travel for the holidays and don’t have much room in their suitcases to bring home lots of gifts?! So if you are REALLY good (not just normal good), he comes to your travel location AND to your home?! True story.

We know this for sure because our friend Ruthie, who is taking care of our cat and our home took a photo of all the wrapped packages Santa left at our house and texted it right to us! Amazing, right?

Well, so far, so good, I guess. But it sure didn’t FEEL so good scrambling to get everything done, and we have ZERO idea what we’re doing for New Year’s Eve… (that’s a holiday, too, right?)

Ho.Ho.Ho.