Aside from our snow day on Monday, this week has been mostly back to normal. The kids started their activities again. I went on a little adventure Wednesday night. I’d mentioned on the blog that last weekend no one was willing to go to Longwood Gardens with me to see the Christmas lights. So I decided to go on my own during the week. It was certainly less crowded. I left the house around 4:30 p.m. and was back before 8 p.m. I love that Longwood has kept the lights up until January 12th. It was freezing, but I bundled up, spent a lot of time in the greenhouse(s), and had my Hot Hands in my pocket. I really enjoyed myself!

Next week (Jan 13-20) I am hosting my annual Time Tracking Challenge. You can sign up to get daily motivational emails from me here. I will be posting my time logs on this blog, and we’ll have a large number of people tracking simultaneously. If you’ve ever thought it might be interesting to track your time, now is your chance!

 On the content front…This week the Before Breakfast podcast welcomed Amy Wilson to the show. She is the author of the brand new book Happy to Help, and she shared strategies for figuring out boundaries when there is too much to do.

Over at Vanderhacks (my Substack newsletter) some recent posts included “You are someone’s after” and “It’s OK to throw it away” (which is the case against guilt-based clutter). Behind the paywall, I shared “10 money challenges that have nothing to do with deprivation.” Please consider a free or paid subscription!

At the Best of Both Worlds Patreon page we are having a lively discussion of our top 3 books of 2024.

Thanks for reading and listening. I really appreciate it!

See Luminature at the Philadelphia Zoo. This did not start promisingly, as the little boys whined a lot. But I purchased them little light-up toys to wave around and they cheered up. The 9-year-old did deign to tell me that it was a lot of fun. So that was a win.

Get Christmas lights professionally installed. Yep, it’s been fun to see the trees lit up when I come home! I think next year I might spring to get a few more trees wrapped in lights. They gave me a bid to line the driveway with lights, but since we have a very long driveway, I balked. I am, fundamentally, a frugal person, and there are limits to my holiday merriment.

Attend the Pentatonix concert. My 17-year-old and I went to this in Madison Square Garden two days before Thanksgiving. It honestly feels like a lifetime ago at this point! I enjoyed the concert a lot and he did too.

Host Thanksgiving. I did indeed cook a turkey. I did not run the Thanksgiving morning 5k because it was pouring down rain but I ran on my street (so I could duck quickly into the house to warm up). My little brother brought sourdough rolls, which were wonderful (I’d needed a sub for my sister-in-law’s rolls since she was traveling to her family!). It was also fun to get together with SHU’s family over Thanksgiving weekend.

Visit Longwood Gardens. I did this as a date night with my husband but I am still hoping to go back one more time before the Christmas decorations end on Jan 12th. I enjoyed seeing the brand new greenhouse.

Sing in many Christmas concerts. This was kind of the defining feature of my December. I sang in both a carol concert and the Bach B-Minor Mass with Choral Arts Philadelphia. I sang in a service of lessons and carols and the Christmas Eve service with my church choir. So much singing. It was great. I was so worried I’d get a respiratory virus and lose my voice but I managed to keep that part of my body healthy at least. We shall not speak of the norovirus epidemic.

Do a cookie baking extravaganza. My daughter and I went to visit my mom in New Jersey and we baked Christmas cookies and gingerbread cookies while there.

Have breakfast with Santa. We went to Neiman Marcus and did their breakfast up in the cafe. People got balloons and face paint. My frugal children did their annual balking at the price tags on stuff we had to walk through to get to the cafe.

Watch the Nutcracker. Did not happen. I bought tickets, then my companion (17-year-old) got sick and we did not go. I will aim for next year!

See the Rockettes in NYC. All of us drove into the city and watched the show this year, then went out to dinner. There were elements that reminded me why we left the city (walking around in 17 degree weather…the restaurant not being able to seat us until 20 minutes after our reservation and we were waiting in a crowd of people and constantly having to move…) but the show was fun. We may not go see the Rockettes next year as the show was pretty much the same as last year. Perhaps they change it up every few years. But we might go back to see lights and go shopping in NYC.

Watch kids in the Christmas pageant. My reader did excellent and my sheep was a very convincing sheep.

Get matching family pajamas. We wound up with a red and black plaid pattern from Amazon. It worked!

Read Christmas stories with the 4 (now 5) year old. He is still a beast at bedtime, but we read a lot of Christmas stories. Last night we read Jan Brett’s Home for Christmas, which is about a naughty troll, and I felt like potentially there was some identification with said troll.

Do the Lego Christmas scene and some Christmas puzzles. We finally finished the Lego set last weekend! I did two 1000-piece holiday-themed puzzles, plus a 500-piece winter themed one.

Enjoy myself. Well, some of the time. There was a lot of stress with gift procurement, traveling right after Christmas, and trying not to get sick. But there were some nice moments too. A holiday season is vast, and contains multitudes.

While it can be easy to feel gloomy in winter, especially post-holidays, this isn’t inevitable. In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I talk about winter fun lists, and different activities that can make it enjoyable. Maybe some day I’ll go on a sleigh ride!

Then we pivot to discussing my annual time tracking challenges. Next week (Jan 13-20) a great many of us will be tracking our time together. I’ll post my logs here, and if you’d like to get daily motivational emails from me, you can sign up here. You can download one of my time tracking spreadsheets here (though as you can see, you could easily make your own!)

In the Q&A we tackle a question that’s definitely on my mind: Do I really need to be figuring out summer camp now? Seriously? In January? Didn’t I just make it through the holiday gauntlet???

Please give the episode a listen! As always, we welcome ratings and reviews. And please consider joining our Patreon community. This week we’re discussing snow day kid coverage and work triaging, among other things. Our next virtual meet-up, on January 15th, will cover travel. Membership is $9/month.