Christmas Time is Here!

I can"t believe that tomorrow is the first day of December! 25 days until Christmas. I feel heart palpitations already.

I don't start any real Christmas preparations until December - no Christmas music, no decorations, no real shopping (although, I do pick things up throughout the year). Tomorrow, though, we will be going full throttle into the holidays.

Tonight is our family pizza and movie night and I dvr'ed How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Shrek the Halls for our "movie" selection tonight. And, as a major plus, we now have a place that delivers. So no more treks out to pick the pizza up ourselves and it has been months since we made homemade pizza. Even the little town I grew up in in Tennessee had a pizza delivery place. Who knew Connecticut could be so backwards. I say that very sarcastically, notice the italics?

Tomorrow the radio will be tuned into the "All Christmas music, All the time station" and it won't be moved until after New Year's. I also can't wait to download all my favorites into the ipod. Love Dolly Parton around this time of year. Smokey Mountain Christmas will always be one of my favorites.

This morning I also spent my time (I should have been dusting, washing dishes, doing laundry, but NO ~ there are more important things to do!) setting my dvr to tape every Christmas movie, show and Food Network Christmas episode (Gotta see my Paula Deen!) there is. The girls LOVE to see Rudolph, Frosty, Little Drummer Boy and, my personal favorite, Nestor the Christmas Donkey.

Also, we get a great kick-off to the season tomorrow, with our Girl Scout Holiday Fair. Our Brownie troop make snowflake ornaments, Rudolf flower pots and bell wreath ornaments. I hope the girls have a great time running our booth.

I have been going through all my catalogs, making my lists. Jenna went through the American Girl catalog and initialed everything she wants. I think there are maybe three things that do not have a big "J" next to them. I just heard about this great website for all you fellow Internet shoppers. I hope to be done with Christmas shopping by next week when we start to get ready for Riley's 2nd birthday!

I just love this time of year and this year I hope to make some great memories and do lots of fun things with the girls. We are going to go look at lights with Gramma Carol and we have had tickets to the North Pole Express for months now. I am going to have a baking day with my two best friends and hope to get all my goodies made. And since Christmas is on a Tuesday, I'll actually have a long weekend with the girls (we only get one week off of school up here for Christmas, but we get another week in February for Winter Break) to bake and make lots of holiday crafts. I can't wait.

So, drumroll please.....#30 on my Thankful List is.....Christmas is here! Christmas is here!