Well Ho-Ho-Ho and Happy holidays to you! Being as I have a library of useless images on my desktop I've used in blogs, I"m sure this is a recycled one but enjoy Hermie none-the-less. I have felt that this year I'm a little early with my holiday preparations, I was putting together the yearly update photo-scrapbook compliments of snapfish in early November. It was also the first year we did not drive upstate to NY and spend half of our Thanksgiving weekend in the car, so I had a nice loooooooong weekend in which the 7-year-old insisted we get out ALL the Christmas decorations and GET a Christmas tree. And since, she's the decision maker on most things, we did. Christmas prep complete before December even roared it's head. I have also not send out Christmas cards since....I can't even remember but guess what? They went out BEFORE Thanksgiving this year. I guess I could have waited on that one, but when I have a stack of addressed cards it's just HARD not so send them out and feel accomplished. I would have liked to pose the whole crew in front of the house in bad christmas sweaters, but I guess that will have to wait for another year.

I'm not really sure what my rush is this year. Maybe I'm just bored. Maybe it's the influence of the media and stores putting up Santa right after Halloween. I don't know, I just recall not being ready at ALL last year and now I find myself wrapping presents on NOvember 30th under a fully decked-out evergreen while it's 60 degrees out. I kind of felt like an idiot. I also felt like a complete moron standing in line at 440AM waiting for Target to open this past Friday too, but once I was there, I wasn't leaving until I got my half price electronics. There's a first -and mostly likely last- for everything.

But I think perhaps that the most likely reason of all (extra hoiday points if you know where I pulled that from) may be that this has been a shitty year(s) and I'm ready for some cheer(s). After nixing last years holiday celebrations completely and suffering a paycut and management tier just leaving, we're officially out of debt at my company and having a small holiday happy hour. Granted, it's a friggin Tuesday, but I'll take what I can get and it's a small sign that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully, one that will include my pay-raise reinstated, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. In the meantime, bring on the sales, it's shopping season!