Friday the celebrations started at my little guy’s preschool. He will turn 5 over the winter break, so my husband and I went to celebrate with his class. I read the Jan Brett story “Who’s That Knocking on Christmas Eve?” (a classic in our house), I showed baby pictures (we show one from each year) and then we had cupcakes and strawberries. We have done a lot of these birthday celebrations at this preschool, starting with my eldest’s 5th birthday, which was approximately 12.5 years ago. And this was the last one! End of an era for sure.

Then in the evening, my husband and I went to his office’s holiday party. This is another thing I have been doing for a very long time (and will do for limited more times — he will be retiring from this place at least in 3.5 years). I have learned my lesson from earlier years and now I own long sleeve festive dresses, as winter is cold, and if I were wearing something sleeveless I would just be sitting there in my big puffy coat the whole time. Anyway, we hung out with the folks I know fairly well, and made it home at a reasonable hour (10:45 p.m.) which was key because we had…

Robotics at 6:45 am! My husband took kid #2 to the high school to get the 6:45 a.m. bus to a robotics tournament that was about 45 minutes away. I wasn’t sure I’d make it back to sleep, but I did until 8 a.m. — at which point it was up (kid #1 and me) to go to the dress rehearsal for our church choir concert. We sang through all the pieces in the lessons and carols service, and made it home by about 12:30 or so. (There may have been a Starbucks stop along the way).

Since we had childcare for the little guy on Saturday, I took the three kids I still had (#1, #3, #4) ice skating downtown at the ice rink on the Delaware River in the late afternoon. While this was not on my official Holiday Fun List, it is really quite fun. The weather was perfect (clear and about 34 degrees, so the ice stayed frozen but we were not so cold it was unpleasant). We skated for about an hour. I’m thinking maybe I should have signed kid #4 up for hockey as he was just zipping around everywhere…

Meanwhile, my husband (who does not like to ice skate) went to the robotics tournament to get kid #2, and then take him downtown not too far from the rink to go to the Battleship New Jersey. His scout troop was staying on the ship overnight, so that was quite an adventure for sure.

The next morning we had tickets for all 7 of us for breakfast with Santa at a department store. There had been some discussion of going to get kid #2 off the battleship to come with us, but we decided he didn’t have to go. So it was breakfast for 6 (they still set the table with the fixed menu for 7 and my other kids ate all the good stuff off the extra plate…). It was all right as these things go — the little kids got balloon animals and we took pictures with Santa. I’m still trying to figure out the breakfast with Santa experience we’d enjoy most around here. We used to like the Longwood Gardens one, but then they stopped doing it for a bit.

After, I took three of the kids shopping for sibling gifts at Target. Let’s just say we survived the experience! I dropped those three kids off at home, picked up kid #2 from the local scout house, then hung out for about 2 hours until it was time for the choir holiday concert.

This wasn’t so much a concert as a service of lessons and carols — with readings, and a brass quintet. It’s been fun to sing with my 17-year-old in this ensemble, and I thought the choir sounded quite good. Some pieces are familiar, but every holiday season I learn new ones, like a Norman Dello Joio Christmas Carol that is based on a GK Chesterton poem. My husband came to hear us (leaving the little guy with the other kids – an upside of older children) and then we came home to watch the Eagles game and I did Christmas Legos with kid #3. This set is taking longer than any have in past years because my Lego helpers have gotten older and busier.

But so it goes…The thing about the holiday season is you do so much of the same year to year, but things can’t be the same because we change. Now it’s on to a week of holiday concerts for the kids, more choir rehearsals, and then it will be weekend #3…

It is…a lot of work. I’ve also been working hard on learning my Bach for the B-Minor mass. I’m happy to report that at rehearsal on Monday I knew my notes cold. I never got lost, even in those long runs of crazy 5 or 6 part harmony where I’m in the middle of everything (second soprano line). Now the goal is to mostly be able to look up and to really be able to listen to everyone else.

I am really enjoying the music, though. Hopefully the music will sound like magic, remembering the line that “all magic is just labor, hidden well.” I suppose that is true of the writing of this piece three centuries ago too!

In the meantime, I went to one band concert this week, and I have another kid band concert and choir concert to go to next week. Today I read at the preschool to celebrate the 4-year-old’s upcoming birthday. That happens over the holiday break, so we’re celebrating ahead of time. This weekend there is a choir concert and breakfast with Santa and an office holiday party. And hopefully a little downtime for puzzles.

In the meantime, some of this week’s content….Over at Vanderhacks (my Substack newsletter), I talked about “How to embrace the resolutions preseason” (that one’s behind the paywall). I also suggested that people “Find a micro-hobby” to celebrate their time confetti, and I wrote about how “Open space invites opportunity.” Please consider either a free or paid subscription!

Before Breakfast also had some holiday content, with a suggestion to “Give experiences,” and to “Remember to enjoy yourself.” (Worth noting this time of year!) I also interviewed the incredibly prolific romance and thriller novelist Sarina Bowen. She talked about how she gets ideas, keeps track of her ideas, and then executes on these ideas (to the tune of multiple bestselling books a year; her thriller The Five Year Lie recently hit #1 for thrillers on Audible). Please check that out too!

On Saturday I got up bright and early to drive my eldest to the SAT (NOT on anyone’s holiday fun list, but hey…). He didn’t want to deal with the stress of getting there and parking (it wasn’t at our local high schools) so I took him. I don’t know that he was thrilled with how it went but this is definitely the last time he will take it, so at least there is that!

After, I drove downtown for my dress rehearsal for the Choral Arts Philadelphia carols concert. This is the choir I am singing the Bach B-Minor mass with later this month, but they turned out to have two concerts this cycle, so this was a bonus to get to sing with them for another show. We ran through the numbers with our flute, bassoon, and organ musicians, took a break (I got to explore Rittenhouse Square a bit) and then we performed to a full Holy Trinity Church (apparently 500+ tickets sold). I really really enjoyed this (someone who was in the audience told me I looked like I was having a really good time). The choir’s blend is fantastic. Now I am really excited for Bach!

Sunday was church as usual and then my daughter and I drove to New Jersey to my parents’ apartment where we did a cookie baking extravaganza. We’d made the dough before hand for gingerbread men, so we rolled those out and baked those, then did sugar cookies (my mom had made the dough for those). We ended with many, many cookies so we’ll be working our way through those for a while. While we were waiting for the cookies to cool (to frost) my mom and daughter played something of a heated game of Scrabble, and we helped decorate their tabletop tree.

Now it’s back to work today, but on my list is triaging presents — seeing what we have and what we still need. We’re at that stage in December where there are piles of boxes in my office and I haven’t opened them all, meaning no doubt some random household items like toothpaste are in the Amazon boxes too and I just haven’t found them. It’s feeling a little disorganized, so I want to be on top of it. Then, hopefully, I will be more relaxed about the season…

In other news: I’m cranking along on the manuscript of Big Time, my next book. I’m working on a chapter on being “open to serendipity” — elaborating on an idea I’ve mentioned before that open space invites opportunity into one’s life in a way a cluttered calendar can’t. I know that some of my biggest opportunities have come because I followed a random thread, or responded to an email that might have led to something…but might not have. It’s helpful to build a schedule where at least some randomness can reach you. Anyway, I am always looking for stories of something serendipitous that has happened because of following a random thread. As always you can email me laura at laura vanderkam dot com.

I am also finalizing my 2025 goals list — we record this episode of Best of Both Worlds ahead of time so I try to lock it in…still noodling on the year-long project!!

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?

The 17-year-old did a singing competition where he had multiple appearances in front of judges (not low stress!). I had sort of assumed he could just drive himself there (it was 30 minutes away) but since he is under 18 he was required to have a chaperone. Fortunately I found this out before the actual competition itself (phew!), but it did require some recalculating of the weekend to make sure everyone else still had rides.

We also had a swim meet on Sunday for the 9-year-old that was on my calendar as a “swim team carnival” — I sort of assumed it was a drop in Halloween-themed thing…but then my husband told me it was a meet. And the 9-year-old was in several events. I also made myself available to the 17-year-old as he was filling out college apps — not low-stress!

(Though I remind myself and him that he has been admitted to one of our flagship state schools already, and any other applications are just if-he-wants-to extra. Also, the 9-year-old did really well! He is fast.)

There were multiple Halloween parties, kid get-togethers, a music lesson and such. But, before I construct a narrative that I didn’t have any time for myself this weekend, I can look back on my log and remind myself of a few highlights.

For instance, on Friday afternoon I went for a walk with a friend in a nearby nature preserve. The leaves were very pretty! I also sat on the hammock for 30 minutes reading a magazine.

On Saturday, in between rounds of this singing competition (I decided to drive us back home for a bit in between) I went for a 40-minute run in a different nearby nature preserve. Also pretty!

On Sunday, I hit up the big kids to babysit the 4-year-old while my husband was at the swim meet, and I went on a scheduled tour of the Woodmont Estate not too far from my house. This house has quite an interesting history (it’s still run by the Peace Mission Movement) and I’d never been inside, so I took the opportunity. Fascinating. Then the 17-year-old invited me to go to a pumpkin-carving party with him — one of his friend’s families was hosting, and he said parents could come too. I was flattered to be invited and had a good time.

So, still a lot of good stuff. And I worked a bit on my puzzle – which is harder than I’d planned on. The pieces are randomly shaped, meaning a straight edge doesn’t mean it’s an edge piece…ugh. Slow progress…

In other news: I collaborated with the PeachTree Virtual Assistant agency (which I have used for my VAs!) to produce a “Time management playbook.” This has lots of practical tips on organizing your time. You can download it from their website at this link. (Scroll down to the second line or so).

Photo: Fall light and flowers

In the Q&A Sarah and I read some feedback on our anniversary episode from someone who would like to have the best of both worlds, but is really struggling with finding childcare. We know that availability is a real problem in certain areas, and we express our empathy with the situation. It is hard!

Please give the episode a listen. We always welcome ideas for future topics, so feel free to reach out to me with suggestions.

I can’t say all my kids loved it, but we can never get 100 percent agreement on anything. After some initial grumbling about getting in the car, they’d generally tolerate the experience, and everyone got some fresh air and exercise.

Now, as almost all of our activities have ramped back up, I am aiming to keep family walks in our lives. This requires some strategy. I don’t think any of my children are individually over-scheduled, but there are four of them who are old enough to be enrolled in things. Four times a small number gives you…a bigger number.

So my goal is to look at each weekend ahead of time and figure out how best to preserve a chunk of open space. This past weekend we had soccer and swim on Saturday morning, and softball evaluations, church events, and tennis on Sunday. But all our Saturday stuff was done by lunch time. So we made plans to drive to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, which I had heard good things about, and which — despite being 75 minutes from our house — I’d never visited.

It was a lot of fun! We hiked a “River of Rocks” trail that had the kids scrambling on boulders, and playing in a rhododendron grove by a stream. Since there was still snow in patches, but the air felt like spring, this added a whimsical element to the walk. Plus, we saw hawks circling near a lookout.

We got in the car at 12:45 p.m. We got home at 5:45 p.m., having had the “big adventure” I aim to experience each week.

While Saturday afternoon worked this time, my guess is that in future weeks Sunday afternoons/early evenings will be our open space for trips/walks/adventures. Fewer events get scheduled then (since it’s a school night) and we are consciously choosing not to re-up something that had been scheduled on the later side. It might not always work, but some weeks it will. And some other weeks, soccer/baseball/etc. will get rained out, which opens up space for indoor options, as long as I have thought through contingencies.

In any case, weekends generally need not be either/or. It’s possible to make space for garden-variety kid activities and family outings. But doing so requires looking at the whole weekend landscape ahead of time and thinking about what would work. I’m pretty sure if we hadn’t had a plan to go to Hawk Mountain right after lunch on Saturday we would have wasted quite a bit of time figuring out what to do, negotiating decisions and so forth. And then a 5-hour chunk of a trip might not have seemed possible. By making that plan ahead of time, it turned out there was still time for a walk.

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?