Bah Humbug

How is it almost Christmas?

7 days? Really, how is that possible?

I don't know why it doesn't feel like Christmas to me. Maybe it's the unseasonably warm weather we've had. Or because we're doing a small Christmas this year.  It doesn't make sense to pay for two
storage buildings (yes, we have that much crap!) only to buy more crap.  I mean, the girls are sharing this little bitty room and they hardly have space as it is - we had to put a lot of their toys and things in storage. There just isn't room.  So I feel like I've done very little shopping, very little wrapping. I finished last night and was like, that's it?  Where are all the presents?  They are getting presents. We just scaled back.

Maybe it doesn't feel like Christmas because all my Christmas stuff is in storage. We didn't even have a tree. We had a nice big tree at our old house. We kept it stored in this little built-in storage area in our bedroom but when we moved hubby decided he was just going to leave it there. It was just one more thing to haul off and one more thing to try to fit in storage.  And I don't blame him. That move was horrendous. And the tree wouldn't have fit anyway - it was taller than the ceilings in our trailer.

What I didn't expect was for hubby to suggest that we just forgo a tree completely this year. Um, no. We have young children that are kinda sorta expecting a tree and agree with it or not, that's a big part of our holiday culture. So we have a tree. This little tiny Charlie Brown looking thing.

We got it home and put it up. And that's really an exaggeration. There was no "putting up". I opened the box. I spread a few limbs. Ta-da! There was our tree.

Our tree without any ornaments.

Because, you know, they're all in storage.

What a bummer. Especially because I actually have an obscene amount of ornaments. I like to do different color schemes with our tree every year - red/green, blue/silver, red/gold - I mix it up every year. This year I had actually planned to do purple/pink/turquoise. I specifically bought ornaments in that color scheme.  Hubby would have hated it. But hey, if you don't decorate then you don't get to complain.

The lack of ornaments actually turned out to be a fun thing. The girls strung popcorn and spent a day crafting so they had fun and the tree is fully decorated. And I'm still vacuuming up glitter.

But it's not the same and I'm just not in full Christmas excitement this year. We've got some fun Christmas things planned for this weekend and I'm hoping that gives me the little bump I need.

I mean, what's Santa going to do without his designated Elf in full Elf mode?