The Good:
Stayed on plan and on track right to Thanksgiving - so the house was in order.
Early Grocery Shopping kept me sane and made sure items weren't sold out and that there wasn't too much to put away all at once.
Christmas WAS a success (even if it about killed me this year).
Opening presents at 5am is surprisingly magical. It is still dark and the lights are twinkling. We might do it this way always from now on.
I pre-stuffed the stockings this year for the first time (and the kids didn't notice the stockings were gone). What a time-saver!
The Not So Good:
1. Changing up my menu plan to make Thanksgiving gluten-free took me a LOT of time. Time I should have spent gift shopping (I need to back up my hard-core gift planning into October).
2. Amazon wasn't there for me on Black Friday weekend. Prices were ridiculous.
3. DD's list was very vague so took much longer to get her presents figured out.
4. Shopping not complete by time kids out of school, followed by unexpected relatives arriving.
5. All this led to wrapping on Christmas Eve -- which is exhausting and stressful.
6. Second year in row that I didn't get out the Christmas cards.
7. Needed a few more strands of lights and some more bows and Thanksgiving is not the time to go shopping for them. Do this WAY earlier.
8. The new high school schedule and the extracurricular activities really cut into my time and I really struggled to keep up with my weekends being gone.
Change next year:
1. DH promised he had seen the light and we would never let shopping get this far behind again and he will help me do Christmas prep next October. Especially since not one single item (except for the clothing) was purchased at any sort of discount because we were so late in our shopping.
2. Need solid gift apps in my phone. And a specific app just for holiday grocery shopping (not my regular groceries). Excel and Evernote are not cutting it when I'm on the move. And I can't get an internet signal to access them when I'm in stores. I MUST GET AN APP.
3. I will be writing down every item I was cursing myself for not getting done earlier. There was a list of them!
4. No more surprise relatives arriving before Christmas -- when I'm already on a tight schedule.
Still thinking, there is more.... I'll come back and edit this as I think of them.....
I've decided entering the month of Christmas is like entering Disneyland. You go from zero to 60, and you'd better have a PLAN.