We Do This Every Year...

Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.  ~Christian Nevell Bode

We are getting back to normal around this place and that means that holiday preparations are fast underway.  As many of you know, Jonathan and I tend to commit to just about everything that comes our way.  This is a result of a number of things.  First, we like to be busy - not necessarily as busy as we tend to be, but busy nonetheless.  We enjoy spending time with our friends and family and it seems that our friends and family are happy to oblige us in this area (this is a good thing!).  We both hate missing out on fun and neither of us likes to disappoint people so we tend to try to do it all to avoid either of these two situations.

The holidays are no exception - in fact, the holidays seem to bring our overzealous commitments into sharp focus.  Here is an outline of what lies ahead - so if you don't hear from us for a while, or wonder if we've fallen off the face of the earth, you can refer back to this entry and determine where in our holiday frenzy we are.

We are winding up October with a couple halloween parties - complete with our smallest trick-or-treater in tow.

November brings us birthday parties, two baby showers, a wedding, Thanksgiving in the desert with my family followed by Thanksgiving in North San Diego County with Jonathan's family and possibly a holiday party with friends.  Believe it or not, this is just a warm up for the month that follows....

Thanksgiving in the desert - 2009

Holiday Party with friends - 2007 or 2008

December will be filled with my birthday celebration, St. Nicholas with Jonathan's family, our annual Christmas escape to Santa Barbara with Jonathan's family, Christmas Eve with my mom's side of the family, Christmas at our house (our one guaranteed weekend at home...), our annual holiday party/walk and new year's eve celebrations (which, if I'm being completely honest, will probably consist of us planted on the couch in our jammies, catching up on sleep).

St. Nicholas - 2009

St. Nicholas - 2010

Santa Barbara Christmas - 2010

Some of us on our annual Balboa Christmas walk - 2009

You may be wondering why I'm listing all our events.  I mean, let's face it, we've got a really fun couple of months ahead of us!  I'm doing it because I was thinking about all that lies ahead of us and began feeling a bit overwhelmed.  Now, I must also disclose that this happens every year.  We get to November and the panic strikes.  I start wondering how we'll ever cross all the things off our to-do list when we literally have no open weekends between now and the end of the year.  Then I begin thinking about all the things that need to be done that haven't even been added to the to-do list yet and I begin breaking out into a slight sweat.  Then I express my concerns to my loving husband who doesn't seem to worry about any of this stuff and he tells me that it will all get done in what I feel is a dismissive tone.  He insists that I am mistaken about his tone and that it is not dismissive, but instead it's the voice of calm and reason.  Perhaps this is true, but it doesn't change the fact that his "calm and reason" only serve to annoy me (why can't I have the luxury of "calm and reason"?) and I've been known to lash out at him a time or two (or maybe every single year...) in frustration, wondering why I'm the only one who seems to care about these things.

So, I thought that this year, rather than vent my concern about our rather full schedule to Jonathan, I'd write about it instead with the hope that just getting it off my chest will help avoid a possible misinterpretation of tone.  So, thank you to all who have stuck through my vent-fest.  Oddly enough, I think I do feel better and need not express my concern to my "calm and reasonable" husband after all.

Now, enough venting, I'm off to start chipping away at the ever growing to-do list...