Seven Quick Takes-Christmas edition!

Joining reality star and hot Christmas mama Jen and all the takers again this week!
(I wasn't able to watch last night's Minor Revisions episode so I'm painfully out of the loop, but I loved, loved the first episode! Of course!)

{one}

How to perfectly wrap a Christmas present designmom.com? Nah, I'm good.

I've been blogging deprived this week due to our extreme overage on our monthly internet allotment, and the sudden realization as of yesterday that I have hundreds of gifts to wrap. Hundreds! Ok, obviously not hundreds, but its shocking how fast they add up even when we only get each kid three or so gifts. But never fear, I wrap half-ass-ed-ly so I'm sure I can wrap up the last of it while I watch a whole season of Duck Dynasty tonight! 

{two}

 Peeps have been asking about our tree sitch from that photo of me wearing clothes from last Sunday so heres the scoop. We've always had a child of prime Christmas-tree-destruction-age for the entirety of our marriage, (except that first Christmas when I was just preggo and too sick to get out of bed to put up a tree at all, oh and last Christmas when everyone was over the age of two-weird I know!) so we've just gravitated to putting the tree on a coffee table. It gives an extra 18 or so inches of child protected-ness, and we still usually have to put a further coffee table as an extra deterrent around the tree, and I still only put very cheap unbreakable ornaments on the lower quadrant, but so far its actually a handy idea. Our house is too small to have it more roped off than that so thats the best we can do. I'm sure I stole the idea from Martha. 

{three}

I obviously love the crazy charlie brown-ish type tree. I refuse to have anything but a real tree, and my whole life I've only had trees that my dad and then my husband have chopped down themselves. Living out here on the edge of the arctic, err I mean arboreal forest, it takes only five minutes driving along a road that cuts through my dad's property for us to spy a tree we think will be good enough. I'm not going for perfection, clearly, but it seems much more charming having random holes in places. And I think my decorating scheme I'm going for is vintage/handmade/red and gold chic. Maybe if one day I have a ridiculously large house and get to go to town and put a Christmas tree in every room I'll break down and do a "blue" tree or a "pink and red ombre" tree, but until then I think its more important building memories of imperfect charlie brown trees and all our collected mish-mash of ornaments. Hey I could go on about Christmas tree decorating and the philosophy behind it but you probably have a couple hundred gifts to wrap too.

{four}

I barely recovered from my horrible start to the week. I was a complete irritated, angre, grumpy, probably hormonal total Grinch. And what added insult to my already really poor imitation of a good mother, was how I felt I had so many good intentions to just love, love, love my kids especially in the wake of last week's tragedy. But lo and behold Monday it was all I could do not to yell at the fortieth request for a glass of water. One of those days where it feels as if every single thing you say to your toddlers is met with an extremely hostile "NO". Which of course always spurs me to a demenour of kindness and syrupy smiles. Tantrums over napping? Throw those in too. Tantrums over an incomplete cracker? We're on a roll already, why not. Needless to say I yelled everyone into napping for a couple hours and then I just wrote the rest of the day off with the only goal of not being a total ogre to everyone. Tuesday was a bit better but with my irritation aimed at everything else in my life. Can't finish things before Christmas? Cancelled appointments? Even trying to get to confession a complete pain in the ass? All things that completely irritated me. I think I'm almost to the point of trying to let go of all the things I can't control but wanted to get done, all my epic mishandlings of the week, and concentrate on the fun times of the next few days and ya know, Jesus and stuff. But my track record has been abysmal of late so we'll see. And if you could say I prayer that I actually do get to confession this weekend it would be great!

{five}

Ok. This is the second straight Christmas that I'm pregnant. Albeit last Christmas I had a baby three days later so I had a glass of wine with Christmas dinner because a woman nine months pregnant deserves SOMETHING, and I most probably will have a drink at each holiday dinner this year too, but I so miss alcohol this time of year! I miss hot buttered rum (which is really weird and gross if you've ever made it from scratch but tastes ridiculously awesome!), I miss my signature cranberry cocktail, I miss my champagne, I miss eggnog and rum, I miss eggnog and kahlua, I miss eggnog and brandy, I miss a good scotch while filling the stockings Christmas Eve, Christmas morning mimosas, Christmas afternoon Spanish coffees, wine. I just miss alcohol dammit! And this makes me sound like a complete lush come Christmas time, but when is there a more festive time to drink any ridiculous concotion of alcohol?! So please, if you're not pregnant, have a drink and think of me!

{six}

Oh remember when I was pontificating all that Christmas/Advent advice?! Well this weekend we have our parish Christmas party, company coming for the weekend, the Husband working half of Christmas Eve, me and my planning of all the Christmas Eve Mass music which I haven't even thought twice about yet, Christmas Eve, then Christmas Day and then travelling to the in-laws and back again Boxing Day. And my hundreds of gifts to wrap, and zero baked cookies. Basically its chaos from here on out. Chaos without the benefit of a good drink people!

{seven}

And to leave you with something that is the complete opposite of merry and festive this is our forecast for the upcoming week:

	SaturdayDecember 22	SundayDecember 23	MondayDecember 24	TuesdayDecember 25	WednesdayDecember 26	ThursdayDecember 27
Conditions  6am - 6pm
	Scattered flurries	Flurries	Cloudy with sunny breaks	Mainly cloudy	Scattered flurries	Variable cloudiness
P.O.P.	60 %	40 %	30 %	30 %	40 %	30 %
High	-17 °C	-19 °C	-21 °C	-23 °C	-20 °C	-20 °C
Feels Like	-25	-27	-28	-34	-33	-29
Low	-21 °C	-20 °C	-29 °C	-29 °C	-26 °C	-25 °C
Wind	N  10 km/h	E  15 km/h	N  5 km/h	S  10 km/h	SE  20 km/h	SE  10 km/h
24-Hr Snow	2-4 cm	2-4 cm	-	-	close to 1 cm	-

14 Day TrendHistoricalStatisticsWeather MapsVideo Forecast

Doesn't seeing a forecast like that feel you with horror?? Apparently its the coldest Christmas in over 40 years. Hurrah! So our happy Christmas will most definitely come from what's important like enjoying the excitement of "Baby Jesus being born to Mary and Josept in the barn with the cows!" Every day Gemma and Dom wake up and run to the nativity that lacks a baby Jesus and say "Aww, but when is baby Jesus coming?!" And its Max's first Christmas so I'll most definitely try to get as many forced Christmas poses and wrapping present-eating pictures as possible! Christmas is really wonderful with children, and somehow all the work and chaos is totally worth it. So if I don't get on here before then, I wish everyone a very blessed Christmas and hope you all celebrate to the fullest!