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.

Those things are not going on the official List, though, because this year the List is specifically about things I find fun! Here’s what we will do.

See Luminature at the Philadelphia Zoo. I’ll take the two little boys on the night the big kids are going to see Wicked. These lights are pretty and, more importantly, only about 20 minutes from the house. This will kick off the holiday festivities for me!

Get Christmas lights professionally installed. This is already done— we have several trees wrapped with lights. It’s fun to see them come on as darkness falls. Also fun: the crew will come get them and take them down in January. Our house manager is putting up the official “fancy tree” this week — the artificial one with matching ornaments. I’m hoping for candles in the window soon.

Attend the Pentatonix concert. This was a last-minute addition to the list, but I got tickets and am bringing my oldest to go see their Christmas repertoire.

Host Thanksgiving. A few members of my extended family will be joining us. I also plan to run a turkey trot 5k that morning. My 15-year-old is signed up to run it, as is SHU (she is visiting her family, who live near me, for Thanksgiving)! They will both be running far faster than me. At least I can say hello at the start and the end. My sister-in-law who makes the fabulous rolls turns out to have other Thanksgiving plans this year so we’ll need to come up with a substitute.

Visit Longwood Gardens. My husband and I plan to do this as a date night to celebrate my birthday. I feel like the kids always rush me through the pretty decorations. So this time we are not bringing the kids! But we might go some other time with the kids. I bought the Longwood membership where you don’t have to make reservations, and A Longwood Christmas is almost completely sold out, so I feel like I have the hot ticket here…

Sing in many Christmas concerts. I’m singing a concert of carols with Choral Arts Philadelphia, and then also doing a service of lessons and carols with my church choir. I’ll sing in the Christmas Eve service with my church choir and then in the New Year’s Eve performance of Bach’s B-Minor mass with Choral Arts. Singing the B-Minor mass has been on my bucket list for years so I’m really excited about this.

Do a cookie baking extravaganza. My daughter and I are likely heading over to my mom’s house to do this. Fake butter will be involved! I think we might be able to make three types of cookies in an afternoon.

Have breakfast with Santa. I want to do this, and my daughter really wanted to do this, so we booked a breakfast for seven at an area department store. We have been instructed (by said daughter) to dress up this time.

Watch the Nutcracker. I think only the oldest kid wants to do this with me, but I always like the music and the dancing. I have not purchased tickets yet as finding a time is challenging (See: everything else on the schedule) but my husband and I are theoretically having a December calendar meeting tonight. Stay tuned.

See the Rockettes in NYC. We bought tickets to bring all seven of us this year! We’ll also go out to dinner in New York afterwards (reservation for 7 = made), and see the Rockefeller Center tree.

Watch kids in the Christmas pageant. Only 2 are performing this year, but that’s fine. I will miss this when no one wants to do it anymore!

Get matching family pajamas. We’ve ordered pajama sets from Pajamagram for the last 5 years, but the problem with doing that is we’ve kind of exhausted their inventory of pajamas we like. So this year my daughter chose a basic red and black pattern and we bought pairs from a few different vendors on Amazon. This is another tradition that I’m not sure will last forever. There is a lot of grumbling. But I think we can squeeze out another year or two.

Read Christmas stories with the 4-year-old. He’s been a bit of a beast at bedtime lately. But we do enjoy reading together. I’m heavily pushing the Christmas stories to him in between the Spiderman books that he wants me to read to him. I like Christmas Farm, Pick a Pine Tree, Cranberry Christmas, Apple Tree Christmas, Christmas Day in the Morning, 5 Sleeps Until Christmas, The Night Before the Night Before Christmas, How Santa Got His Job, The Christmas Wish, and others. The Grinch is fun to read maybe twice but he kind of likes to read that one a lot.

Do the Lego Christmas scene and some Christmas puzzles. I’ll make the North Pole Lego post office (this year’s scene) with the 15-year-old (who is indulging me) and the 13-year-old (who probably is too). I just finished the holiday carolers scene puzzle from White Mountain that a lovely BLP Live participant gave me. I’ll clear the dining room table for Thanksgiving and then even if December is short there will be time for a few more puzzles before the holidays.

Enjoy myself. If you are your family’s chief magic maker you know that this actually does need to go on the list as a reminder. (As the line from last year’s Christmas sonnet goes, “All magic is just labor, hidden well.”)

What’s on your holiday fun list?

To which I say bah humbug. It can be fun to indulge in the holiday magic, especially if you have lots of kids around. There will be many years with a lot less magic in life! It’s OK to be a little busier in December around these festive holidays (whatever you celebrate) as life has much less busy phases.

In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I discuss holiday plans (+ December birthdays), holiday fun lists, gift giving, and making sure there is something fun for you. Especially if your kids are off school for a while, it can be good to make sure you have a break during this time! We end with a question from a listener about how to involve kids in holiday + vacation planning.

Please give the episode a listen! And please consider joining the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community. Next week, on December 12th, we’ll be gathering via Zoom for our annual Goal Setting Workshop, which Sarah will lead. If you’ve been curious about her Best Laid Plans Academy content, this is a way to get a little taste — and clarify your intentions for 2024. Membership is $9/month. See you there!

(I love this picture of the 6-year-old holding up the toddler so he can get a better view…)

I also took the two older boys to the Pennsylvania Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker on Sunday. It was probably not quite as exciting as Spiderman (which they saw Friday night) but I think they enjoyed it. I certainly did! I love the snowflake dance in particular, though sadly this year they didn’t have the boy choir accompanying it. I did get a bonus musical festive moment on Sunday though: at church the music director played Bach’s Wachet Auf as the prelude. This is my favorite piece of organ Christmas music, and it’s always a treat to hear it.

This morning I looked back on my 2021 holiday fun list, and I think I’ve basically hit everything at this point. We saw several holiday displays, including LumiNature at the Philadelphia Zoo, Longwood Christmas, the Morris Arboretum Garden Railway, the Brandywine River Museum’s holiday train show, and then the get-up at the aquarium. (We also went ice skating downtown, and that was decorated for Christmas.) My husband and I went to his office holiday party, and I managed to make some of my existing clothes work. We went out for dinner for my birthday. I’ve been playing lots of Christmas carols on the piano. The 12-year-old and 10-year-old and I constructed the “Visit from Santa” Lego display, and we’re about a quarter of the way through the Elf Clubhouse. Will we finish by Christmas? We shall see!

I have not bought a whole lot of holiday flowers for the house, though we do have a poinsettia, which we bought at the 14-year-old’s holiday choir concert. We also have two amaryllis plants which are sprouting and budding rapidly. I have been reading some Christmas stories with the 6-year-old, though he has now graduated to reading by himself, and has really gotten into the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, so he’s been hustling me along to get through the Christmas stories so he can read. Oh well. I think the (now almost) 2-year-old might be willing to sit through the stories next year!

All that’s left to do is go to the Christmas Eve stuff: the live nativity at church, and the service of lessons and carols. Well, and some more wrapping. But I’m happy looking back at how many festivities we’ve managed to fit into the last 6 weeks or so. That’s a lot of memories — which is the point of these seasonal fun lists, and why I keep making them.

We have now seen LumiNature at the Philadelphia Zoo, the Holiday Garden Railway at Morris Arboretum, and Longwood Christmas at Longwood Gardens. I’m glad we saw all of them, though with the kids, it’s important to keep expectations in check. Nothing is ever fun for the whole family for the entire time. However, we’ve generally been making the family go for walks most weekends anyway, and walks with lights and Christmas trees are better than walks without lights and Christmas trees. So there’s that.

Now that December is upon us, Sassy the Elf has returned. I just hope Sassy has the good sense not to perch anywhere that Max the puppy can reach, since that could go horribly for everyone. We have a torn-up Nerf football that could attest to that. The 12-year-old and 10-year-old and I are building the Lego Christmas house. The Christmas cards arrived, featuring our November family photo shoot. My husband has sent his half. I have yet to send mine. Someday.

We got the Christmas tree over Thanksgiving weekend. In the interest of keeping it away from Max (well, and the toddler) I decided to put it in the front entry way, outside the puppy gates, instead of in the family room. Since it is in the entry way, I was also able to enforce an “only white lights and no broken or tacky ornaments rule.” As a result the tree actually looks nice! I quite like this set-up. Perhaps in the future we’ll do two trees. A sophisticated one for me and the kids can have a smaller one with whatever color lights and ornaments they want to stick on it.

I have been having moving companies come by to give estimates on moving our stuff. This has really made me interested in having less stuff under the tree for Christmas, but at least one attempt backfired. I decided the older children could do a Secret Santa gift exchange for each other, rather than giving presents to all their siblings. People agreed, and then this brought out every negative sibling dynamic that exists in this house. Within a day people had broken secrecy, taunted others with broken secrecy, etc. So we’re back to giving everyone presents. Oh well.

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?

There is much to be grateful for on this Thanksgiving weekend. On the other hand, I have reached the stage of late pregnancy where everything is just physically uncomfortable. And while reaching this stage of pregnancy is itself a cause for gratitude (hello, I turn 41 this week!) it’s slightly harder to feel that way as I haul my heavy self around. Getting in the car is difficult. Bending over is an unpleasant experience. I get winded going up stairs. This is going to be a long next 6-7* weeks.

So I am just taking it day by day. In the morning: hey, I made it through another night (hopefully not too bad of one…I read or work if I can’t sleep). In the evening: another day in the books! I tend to fall asleep easily, even if I don’t stay asleep, so it’s kind of a treat to nestle into the comfy spot I have carefully constructed from what seems like a fort-worthy number of pillows.

In Off the Clock, I devote a section to how people get themselves through challenging times — more challenging than what I’m facing, but the same lessons apply.

First, know that the time frame is probably limited. Certainly that is the case with pregnancy. All time passes. If you need to stay in a miserable job for 2 years, well, 2 years is 17,520 hours, and you won’t work for all of them. When you can set a reasonable end on the time frame, you can pace yourself through a great many things.

Second, find little moments to enjoy as you can. I don’t always feel terrible. Even if my physical body is a mess there are some really cool things going on professionally and personally in my life. And sometimes there are good moments that are enjoyable precisely because of their contrast with the crummy situation. I loved Tough Mudder champion and ultrarunner Amelia Boone’s description (in Off the Clock) of seeing the sun rise after she’d been out all night on a freezing obstacle course. It was just a normal wintry sunrise, and someone out driving on the highway would have thought nothing of it. But there in the cold morning, Boone was elated. She had earned that dawn.

In any case, I’m trying to enjoy what I can of the holiday season. I got a particular kick (not the fetal variety!) this weekend out of seeing my kids select gifts for each other. It’s not always easy to roam a toy aisle and move beyond “I want that” to “I bet my brother would like that.” But they picked out fairly thoughtful things for each other. Apparently that empathy muscle is developing somewhere!

*I presume. With my advanced maternal age, there is pretty strong pressure not to go past the due date.

Photo: Last gasp of fall color. I snapped this photo, then we had wind and freezing temperatures and that was the end of that. 

That’s particularly important around the holidays, which are all about conjuring up special feelings. Longtime readers know — as we head into Thanksgiving next week — that I’m not into simplifying the season. Indeed, to me, Christmas is a great occasion to consciously make time feel a little more full and rich. Much like the season’s cuisine! I’m especially cognizant of that this year, when January will bring a newborn who — for all his cuteness — will make going out in fancy clothes more complicated.

A side note: We have a fair amount planned because we are not traveling anywhere this year (due to the impending arrival of said newborn). The kids are out of school for 8 days or so, and we have been making daily plans to avoid going stir crazy.

So here’s what’s on the holiday fun list this year:

Matching family pajamas! I bought these but we have not tried them on yet. I got winter-themed ones so we’ll get some post-Christmas use out of them. And I bought an 0-3 month size one! He’ll be part of the family, so why not make it official?

Learn to play Linus and Lucy. I’d put this on a previous goal list and not done it. I finally ordered the sheet music for the Charlie Brown Christmas show. I’ve played it through a few times. Kind of tricky, as I’ve not done jazz piano before. But I’m enjoying a new challenge, especially now this year when I have a real piano!

Build the Lego Gingerbread house. My 10-year-old and 8-year-old are assisting on this project. Next year we will not be able to leave small Lego pieces in accessible places, so this is the year for putting together the 1000-piece sets. There are 200-plus steps, and we’re at about 50, so this may take all the way to Christmas.

Put candles in the windows. We have done this (electric candles, of course), and it really makes the house look welcoming as dark comes early.

Philadelphia Zoo LumiNature. We have tickets for the zoo’s new winter light show. I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ve done with this.

The Choo Choo Barn. This train display in a small strip mall store in Lancaster was honestly one of my holiday highlights last year. We’ll likely go over Thanksgiving, and may also stop by the PA Railroad museum, and possibly Dutch Wonderland for their lights.

Sing in my choir’s Christmas concert in mid-December, and on Christmas Eve (7:30 p.m. service). I can see from upcoming music lists that we’re singing “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree,” which is one of my favorite pieces. The concert also features the Brandywine Brass. I don’t think I’ll sing in the midnight service, lest that result in Santa skipping our house, but I love singing Christmas music, and I’ll be doing a lot of that this month.

Go on a festive “baby moon” with my husband. It’s more of a mini-moon, but we plan to go to New York City, possibly take in an art museum, go out to eat, sleep in a hotel, and do brunch the next day.

See the Nutcracker. This is a holiday tradition at this point. My three older children, and my mother-in-law (who is visiting for the holidays) will accompany me to the PA Ballet’s production.

See the Morris Garden Railway. Another holiday train display! We may have gotten tickets to just about every holiday light show in the greater Philadelphia region….

Longwood Gardens Christmas lights. We normally do breakfast with Santa, but I never saw anything about that this year. So, instead, I got tickets to walk around and see the lights after dark.

Host my extended family holiday party. Now that my parents have moved to the East Coast, we’re all within two hours from each other. I know tradition calls for a Christmas dinner ham but the truth is…I don’t like ham. Maybe I can supplement with something else. Tenderloin?

See the kids in the church Christmas pageant. All four of them are now old enough to be in it!

See the Cirque du Soleil Christmas show. Another one we got tickets for in order to get the kids out of the house. We’ve got cousins visiting for a while too, so we’re also looking at Disney on Ice, Elmwood Park Zoo’s Wild Lights…

Purchase gifts in a calm and orderly fashion. My husband and I have made a pact to really think through what we’re giving each kid, so we can avoid realizing late that we’ve forgotten something, or one kid is getting a lot more than someone else, and so forth. In general, it’s better to shop early and thus preserve the option to triage later, rather than being forced into gifts you aren’t thrilled about. The goal is happy faces on Christmas morning, without a lot of junk that doesn’t get played with.

What’s on your holiday fun list this year?