Holiday Troubles

Y'all, I love the holidays. Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. For real.

Hey, that would make a good song lyric. Maybe I should look into that.

Anyway. I love decorating and shopping and baking and wrapping and looking at lights and just spending lots of good family time. Oh, and of course, I love cards. I have always enjoyed Christmas cards - both sending and of course seeing everyone else's. I used to not put pictures, but now it is like my favorite part. Plus, I LOVE to see everyone's babies and dogs and cats.

Like my friend April, she can do amazing things with her cats. I swear, they pose.

OK, so I always stress about Christmas Pictures for my card. I want cute. I want funny. I want festive. I want it all. Well, you can't get all that in one card, so I accept that. So this year, I did a fun photo shoot with my kiddos at Scott Lake on base. It was lots of fun. They were so cooperative. I came home, uploaded to shutterfly, and created awesome cards. I was so excited! And I was so proud that I made a decision so quickly.

By the way, I love love love Shutterfly. David has suggested we set up some sort of automatic withdrawal with them directly from his pay check. I am not ruling this out.

So here is our card this year:

It is perfect, I think. The subjects, the photographer, the location, the creator of the card, just perfect, I tell you.

So then I set about finding all the right addresses. An occupational hazard of being a military family is that each year your card list needs lots of work and updates. Thanks to Facebook, this is way easier than it used to be. . . Updates list, check!

I printed the labels. The kids helped me stick the labels on the envelopes. We put the stamps on. We sealed the envelopes. I tried not to think of the untimely death of George's fiance' on Seinfeld as we lick the envelopes. And Voila! We had cards all ready to go. Ready to send out to friends and family. We were all set to spread some Christmas Joy!

So then, I took said cards and put them in the car.

Then the next day, I got in the car, and those darn cards were STILL there. The nerve.

Then the next day, I got in the car, and yep, you guessed it, those lazy cards had not moved. They just sat there. Mocking me.

A week goes by, and I was digging around in the front seat for some gum and you will not believe what I found under Max's car pillow, a week's worth or receipts, and my purse. If you said Christmas cards, you would be right. How can this be? They have not been mailed yet? The mail carrier did not think to look in my front seat under all my trash and my scarf and my PTO folders. Really? Is there no customer service left in the world? They were RIGHT there. In plain sight.

So I finally decided that maybe I had better give them a little help.

So on our way to run some errands, Spencer helped me and our Christmas cards out.

We found this strange blue box on the curb outside the post office building. I opened his door and he actually placed the Christmas Cards into this slot type thing on the blue box.

He was very thorough and placed only about 2 cards at a time in the slot.

I guess you can never be too careful.

And after all that we have been through waiting on these cards to be mailed, we did not want to take any more chances.

And apparently, they will be sent from there. I guess that is pretty easy. Well, not as easy if someone had just mailed them for me, but not too hard.

Here's hoping it works.

Now onto baking.

Do you think that buying the flour, the sugar, and the eggs is enough to end up with delicious Christmas cookies?

Or is this going to be like the card thing and require a little more follow through?

Wow, I cannot believe how much work is involved in holiday preparations. . .