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.

Fortunately he did go down at 7:30 p.m. last night (if he was up again at 11 p.m….) which was good because I needed to record a ton of Before Breakfast episodes. I haven’t been able to do this during the day because my neighbors are putting on a new roof and hence the workers bang and run machinery intermittently from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily.

Did I mention that I am recovering from a cold? Not Covid, but not fun either.

The high schooler was supposed to take the bus this week (since I was on solo duty in the early mornings) but something went wrong two days in a row and I needed to load the three youngest kids into the van (waking two of them) to drive him to school.

I have also spent 1-2 hours on house stuff daily — including such fun activities as re-selecting carpets after realizing my first choices were not good.

So, even though it might seem a bit premature, I have been making Christmas plans. I put together my annual holiday fun list. I have been buying tickets and making reservations. For me, at least, knowing I have fun stuff coming up makes a not-so-great week feel better. I have something to look forward to! Here’s what I plan to do this year to celebrate the season:

Get matching family pajamas. They are ordered! We will open them on Christmas Eve (or the day before) I imagine, and take our family picture. I know that the 12-year-old in particular will wear them once for the picture solely as a favor to me and then never wear them again, but oh well.

See LumiNature at the zoo. I wound up purchasing tickets in advance for a lot of holiday light shows in November. I figure that the weather might be slightly warmer than in December and November weekends tend to be less busy than December ones. Plus, it stretches out the holiday fun! So we’re going to the zoo display soon. We will also go see Longwood Christmas and the holiday railway at Morris Arboretum over Thanksgiving weekend. (I may wind up getting a ticket to see Longwood solo too, as I did last year — it’s a nice family activity but sometimes the kids don’t want to linger in the same way I do…)

Take the boys to the Nutcracker. The performance is back on this year! Seeing this ballet is one of the annual events that really makes Christmas feel like Christmas to me. My two eldest children, interestingly, were the ones who raised their hands to go. We’ve got tickets (and our vaccine cards for the theater).

Go to a handful of in-person holiday parties. My husband has two festive work-related events we will be attending. Alas, between the fifth baby and the pandemic I’m not sure my festive dresses (dating back to 2018 at this point) fit me, so I will add dress shopping to the holiday fun list.

Go out for dinner for my birthday. My parents are coming to celebrate during the day (ok, the day before — my “birthday eve?”) and then stay with the kids while my husband and I go out.

Play Christmas carols on the piano. I’ll need to use the upright piano at the current house as the workmen are still pounding away over at the new one. (Much banging…I suppose my neighbors’ roof is payback for what we’ve put our neighbors at the new place through…).

Make the Lego Christmas set with whichever children wish to participate. I’m debating when to start this one as I don’t want to have small pieces and an in-progress project out while we’re showing the house. But maybe soon.

Buy holiday flowers for the house. We will need to put the poinsettias up high so babies and dogs don’t get into them. My daughter asked that I put “decorate for Christmas” generally on this list. We’ll get a tree of course, and put a wreath on the door. She wants to wrap her bedroom door in wrapping paper. This reminds me that I need to go to Costco to supplement the wrapping paper supply.

Read Christmas stories with the kids. Five kids and fourteen years in, we have a fine collection of Christmas stories. I just bought Mr. Willoughby’s Christmas Tree and the Fletcher Christmas book so we’ll add those to the list.

Visit the live nativity at church. Kind of like going to the zoo and church at the same time, I guess? There’s no Christmas pageant this year, so this will be our main Christmas service for the kids. I may sing in the Christmas Eve service of lessons and carols. They’re still limiting how many people can be in the choir loft so we will see if I make the cut…

What’s on your holiday fun list?