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For some families, the most stressful part of Christmas time is running around from this party to that party and one relatives house to the next. This is why it is so important to create a schedule. A written calendar will not only help you to track where you need to be and when, but it will also allow you to visually see how crazy a particular day or week might be.
Of course every family is different, but if you have friends relatives that are flexible on when you get together I encourage you to take full advantage of that. A Christmas spent at home might be a better option for you than driving around place to place. On the other hand, I guess some families might enjoy the opportunity to visit many different relatives in a single day. Regardless of the type of family you are a member of, keeping a schedule will help you to stay organized and prevent a double booking.
I’ve created a December Calendar to go along with the other Christmas documents that I posted last week. Feel free to use this or whatever calendaring system works well for you!
What tips do you have for making the holiday schedule a little less stressful?
I mentioned above that flexibility is always nice…it especially comes in handy when you have two children and yourself with a December birthday. This is the case for my friend Alyssa who chose to celebrate her little boy’s birthdays in October this year. Although she was a little nervous about how family members might react about the early birthday party it really worked out nicely for their family. She was able to spend a lot more time and energy planning a fun party with a lot less stress than there usually is around the holidays. They still plan on celebrating the boys actual birthday’s in December so they don’t get confused as to when their real birthday is, but they will just do that as a family with a nice dinner at home.
While I’m on the subject, I just have to share pictures of the adorable birthday cakes we made for the boys over the weekend! There were super easy to make and turned out SO cute as you can see. 🙂
Alyssa says
Hey Jen, I am glad that I found it (use link below) because I couldn’t remember where I got the directions from (they came in the mail). It really wasn’t to hard to make either. Also, I don’t know if you have a dollar tree around but they had a lot of great pirate birthday stuff right now. Good luck!
https://www.parenting.com/recipes-article/Child/Recipes/How-to-make-a-pirate-ship-cake/
Jen says
Those cakes are *cute*! I might have to copy that pirate ship for my son’s next birthday. Do you have directions I can steal?
Nichole says
Those are adorable cakes!
Vicki says
This is something we struggle with every year. We have two young children and before they were born, we set up a “this year at my family’s house, next year at your family’s house” kind of schedule, since our parents live four hours away from one another. But now that we have children, we want to change things up. It would be SO nice to be able to have Christmas at our own home. The kids could wake up in their jammies and just open presents and not be stressed to pick up and go somewhere else, sleep (not so well) somewhere else, and haul all their presents somewhere else. I guess we’ll see if we can do this or not this year. Maybe stay at our house Christmas Eve, wake up and open presents, and then go to Christmas dinner somewhere else. We shall see….
siva says
We had this same issue and when my oldest was born we decide it was time to stay in on christmas. She is now 4 years old and we could not be any happier. We are able to do things at our ouw pace and the kids just stay in their jammies all day, sometime we do too!!! We put an invite out for any members of our family who wish to join us at any time during the day. We have food like soups and sandwiches that can be easten any time people come over and when ever people get hungry this way we are not resricted to any schudule and i do not have to be in the kitchen on Christmas!!! It took a few years for our families to get used to this and it was originally meet with much upset on the part of my inlaws but we stuck to our guns and after the first two years with absoutly no buging they got the point and it has been smooth sailing since. Good luck!