On some level, getting to shows in Madison Square Garden is quite easy. The arena is right above Penn Station/Moynihan Train Hall. I now know that we can be off a train and up by our seats in approximately 12 minutes, and that’s going through security and the ticket scanning! So probably I should consider more such shows in the future. We drove into Philly to get the train, but the Keystone train stops at Ardmore on the way to NYC, and Ardmore is 5 minutes from my house.

Of course, the problem is getting home. It was hanging over my head for most of the concert that we really needed to be on the 10:05 regional back to Philly, as the next train doesn’t go until close to 11:30. The 10:05 is bad enough, getting back to PHL at around 11:45, and then it’s a 20-minute drive home (no traffic). There’s no train back to Ardmore, so if we left our car there we’d have to Uber there to get it. We wound up leaving the show about 3 songs early due to my paranoia. We walked in the door at 12:10 a.m.

But! It was a good show. I enjoyed seeing what sounds the human voice can make and they sang their well-known pieces (Mary Did You Know? and Hallelujah, for instance). I am now feeling quite in the Christmas spirit, if tired after getting up to get kids out the door this morning. I am also realizing that I need to figure out my playbook for tomorrow, what ingredients we still need and what needs to go into the oven when. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

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!

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.

At some point in all this, a reader noted that the post-holiday winter season was really crying out for a fun activity list. It’s easy to go into hibernation mode, or to feel a little blue* about the cold weather and still-short days. And while the holiday season suggests obvious festivities, you have to work harder to come up with fun stuff for January/February/March.

But the nature of this bleakness makes a list even more useful!

So, last year I posted a list. I had some big stuff already scheduled (the San Diego trip with the 12-year-old; our family Disney trip over President’s Day weekend). This year, not so much, and with a newborn I need to limit my ambitions. But here are a few I think I could pull off.

Go to the Orchid Show at Longwood Gardens. I love flowers, and it’s quite nice to wander around a greenhouse when there’s snow on the ground outside.

Go to the Philadelphia Flower Show. Same as above. The kids love the butterfly exhibit and I like seeing the floral displays. I am debating which children to bring, though, as some of them (most of them) don’t really like to linger in front of giant floral arrangements and I would like to spend more than 15 minutes in the main hall this year.

Go outside for 20 minutes a day. This is my Q1 goal in the “self” category. So far, so good! Mostly it’s my runs/walks but some days I wrap the baby up well and go sit on the porch to get us both a little sunlight. Sadly, this past Friday my 20 minutes involved retrieving my recyclables that had blown into the neighbors’ yards when the gusty wind knocked over my trash cans and scattered everything.

Run the Frostbite 5-miler. I’m hoping the weather is good. Cold is fine. Precipitation, not so much. Jane has said she is running again in penguin attire.

Go down the indoor water slide at the YMCA. Post childbirth, I’m not supposed to go in pools for a few more weeks. But I’ll probably do this as a big kid activity in late February/March.

Visit an art museum. Always a good indoor activity. As with the flower show, I may be judicious about which children come with me.

Watch a basketball game on TV. I don’t have much of a TV habit. Frankly, there are enough remote controls associated with the TV/stereo system my husband has set up that I don’t really know how to find a show on television.** But I can get my kids to help and then some night this winter I am going to watch a basketball game. The end of the college season always sneaks up on me, and I would like to watch a game before it does. Plus the 76ers are pretty decent this year. I’ve put “go to a basketball game” on this list two years in a row and it hasn’t happened so I know better than thinking it will this year with the baby.

Do a date night somewhere cozy. Possibly with a fireplace. Or we just hit Talula’s Daily again.

Take a sleigh ride. OK, this is the one on the list that may not happen. This is on my bucket list, and I found a place about 30-40 minutes from here that does them. BUT it is entirely weather dependent (requires > 3 inches of snow cover; we don’t have constant snow cover in this part of PA). You have to call to make a reservation in the window that they’ve opened for reservations, which means you have to be willing to do it last minute. That doesn’t work all that well with my current life, but we shall see. If not this year, maybe next year!

*Feeling really blue about them is a different matter, and beyond the scope of a winter fun list.

**To be honest, I don’t actually know for sure how to turn the thing on.