Goodbye to the Christmas season!

Today, the day after the Epiphany, we took down all our decorations.

Can I tell you how relieved I am? I feel tremendous amounts of stress and pressure around the holidays (mostly self-inflicted!), and while I always try to make it a happy, joyous season for my family, it is never much fun for me. This year was really tough for me. I had all these great ideas, and I feel like I accomplished nothing. I had books I wanted to read to the kids, we never finished our St. Nicholas icons, didn't do any of the other fun projects I had planned. I was particularly disappointed because our internet went down for most of the day on the Epiphany, and because I hadn't planned ahead, I was not able to access the sites for the Epiphany tea or even the Epiphany house blessing! :-( Note to self - print out all those great ideas from the internet, just in case you lose your connectivity!

A great part of the problem was being under the influence of some medications that made me feel particularly nasty the last two weeks - I'm off of it now, thank goodness, and already feel more myself. Plus, the kids were sick most of the last few weeks, and this weekend dh has gotten very ill, too.

But still, I'm rather disappointed. I had hoped to do more meaningful things this year, I had fabulous ideas, but I feel like I totally dropped the ball. I think what I can learn from this is to not plan quite so much, pick two or three ideas that are meaningful and speak to your heart, and do just that. Put a bit more forethought into it (print out anything you need well before the actual day it's needed! :-) And relax. The key for me is that *I* need to relax about the season. I definitely think I need a whole year to work on that!

The good thing is, as we were taking down our decorations, the kids were talking about how this was the best Christmas ever. They loved Midnight Mass and our nativity scene activities. They loved the presents, too, of course. But, they really do understand that Christmas is about the birth of Our Lord and Savior, and that is all that matters to me!