You know, I was feeling pretty good about this Christmas season. I had a ton of gifts bought or ordered, and heading into last weekend I just had a handful of gifts to figure out. And I did that for most of them. My packages were all scheduled to arrive on time this week...except one. But more on that in a minute. In general, even though I had a ton to do with wrapping and all the usual last minute stuff, I felt okay. And then this week hit.
Sunday I was checking tracking info for all of my shipments, and I realized my one package containing two of Carter's big gifts hadn't moved since Wednesday. The delivery date had fluctuated from Friday to Monday to Tuesday, but now FedEx's site showed no estimated delivery date at all. The only time I've ever seen that before, my package ended up lost. I got on a customer service chat with Target and asked when I should get concerned, and they assured me that it was fine and that it should arrive on Tuesday, which their site still said. And if it didn't, they'd make it right. She even gave me a 20% refund for my trouble, which was unnecessary but nice. Well, shockingly, on Monday night I noticed the package had arrived in Syracuse, and delivery was in fact scheduled for Tuesday. I felt a lot better...until Craig called me mid-afternoon when he stopped home for something and found the delivery leaning up against the garage. He said, "Did you order cat food?" I seriously thought he was scamming me, given the ridiculousness with this package already. But no, the giant box that had been delivered did not contain two toys, but rather two 20-pound bags of cat food.
Oddly, the box contained two packing slips. One was for our stuff, which of course was nowhere to be found, and the other was for the cat food, which was supposed to go to Salt Lake City. That packing slip still had the shipping labels attached. I have no idea how our box never got packed and this one was packed but never labeled properly, but there it was. So of course I got back on the chat with Target, and later on the phone, at which point I figured out that they were sold out of both items and I had no choice but to get a refund. I got a $10 gift card as a consolation prize, but that wasn't much of a consolation, since things were selling out left and right, and the one gift was actually on sale when I bought it and was now prohibitively expensive (for what it is, anyway). By some miracle I managed to find the one toy available at the Walmart near my work, so I immediately bought it for store pickup. The other one was available at a couple other Walmarts, but again, it was more expensive and now I was having second thoughts. We hatched a backup plan, but we have yet to finalize which way we're going. Regardless, it completely threw me off and aside from bringing out my wrapping stuff that night, I felt highly unmotivated to make further progress.
Oh, and shortly after the initial cat food discovery, I received three other notifications from Target that packages had been delivered. Only, they weren't there. Craig didn't see them, and neither did Jacob when he came home. Of course, then I started panicking that we were the victim of porch pirates, and that I'd have nothing to give anyone for Christmas at this rate. Then I noticed that the package delivery info mentioned a "dock" and a "mail room", which is odd since our house has neither. Eventually I figured out that they were UPS SmartPost items and I'm guessing they were delivered to the post office. However, I've never had a delivery say it was "delivered" upon arrival to the post office. Usually it's just another update in the tracking, and then once it's in my mailbox courtesy of the mailman, it says "delivered". Fortunately, those items did, in fact, show up yesterday...along with at least four other deliveries. Sorry, delivery men, that everything ended up falling on the worst weather day of the year so far!
On the bright side of all of this madness, when I went to pick up the one reordered toy yesterday morning on my way into work, I took a stroll around the store just in case I could find a gift for my aunt. It was on her family exchange wish list, and I should have ordered it on Amazon right away, but tried to find an alternative from elsewhere. It was a very basic hooded sweatshirt, so I thought maybe I could find something a bit more stylish or fun that would serve the same purpose. But I had zero luck, and by the time I went to order it, they were no longer guaranteeing on-time shipping. So I had been a bit torn on that--whether to continue the quest or pick something else that wasn't on her list. I still checked every store I went in for something similar without luck, but I knew Super Walmarts usually have an expanded clothing selection. Sure enough, I walked over, and sitting on a rack was the exact thing I needed. Size, color, style....everything. It wasn't even with other stuff like it. It was like it was just placed there, right for me. ::cue angels singing:: I did eventually find the similar rack nearby, but what are the odds that the one I needed would be sitting right there? I killed two birds with one stone on that stop, which was fabulous.
So, on the gift front, I really just have a few things left to get, only one of which is a complete unknown and one of which I've basically narrowed down but need to hope things go well in actually buying it. I have no idea when I'll have time to do this stuff, of course. We had confirmation/bible study last night, two basketball games tonight, and then Craig leaves for Halifax on Friday. The kids are never thrilled about going out no matter what, and if I have any last minute stuff to pick up for them, that won't work anyway. I have a half day on Monday but by then I'll have a boatload of stuff to be doing, including packing for Buffalo. Sigh. The list never ends.
And that's not even getting into the thing that's stressing me out the most right now. Food has always been a bit stressful at Christmas, if only because we have to travel and I need things that transport well and can deal with a cold car and/or lack of proper refrigeration, depending on the circumstances. But that got even more complicated when Jacob was diagnosed with Celiac disease, as I then had to start making separate plans for him. I try to have gluten-free cookies to offset the abundance of ones he can't eat at every party. I try to have a backup for an actual meal, since once in a while there is inexplicably nothing he can eat--at least that he likes. I know at our Christmas Eve stop there will be ham and kielbasa, and my mom always does her best to keep most of her stuff gluten-free for our Christmas Day lunch-time meal. Dinner at my uncle's is always a bit more of a free-for-all. When I make something to share, I try to make sure it's something he likes and will eat. Last year when I made Broken Glass, the yummy, creamy, jello based dessert that's a family tradition, I made it with a gluten-free crust and thank goodness I did, because the dinner selections just didn't really work for him and I think he subsisted on Broken Glass alone that night. So, trying to come up with ideas that fit all of the criteria is hard, and I get to this point in the season every year and start freaking out, because it inevitably means multiple trips to Wegmans during already busy days.
In addition to party/travel food, the kids want to make cookies this weekend. So I need to have the ingredients for that. I know I have to make cinnamon rolls on Monday night to have ready to bake on Christmas Eve morning. As if that wasn't enough, today Jacob's class is doing some sort of Christmas Around the World thing. A couple weeks ago he said that he needed me to make tamales or some sort of other Mexican Christmas food. I looked at him blankly, as I know tamales are a bit of a process. I was hoping for more suggestions or a bit more insight, which never really came, so I searched Pinterest here and there. Then I basically forgot about it until Tuesday when I saw it among his assignments in the parent portal (and he simultaneously happened to text me about it). After a bit of a Facebook freakout, my boss suggested getting premade tamales. Genius! Turns out Wegmans has them, so last night after confirmation, we bought a couple packs of them. They even had microwave directions from frozen, so I didn't even have to cook them myself! Dodged a bullet there.
For work, I was debating just bringing in donuts or bagels as a Christmas gift to everyone, since our department is getting too big for even small token gifts. But there's a gluten-free co-worker there, too, so I knew I needed an option for her. Since a couple people are off on Friday I was targeting today for that. Well, last night while we were at Wegmans I made the snap decision to just make my monkey bread for everyone this morning, and buy gluten-free donuts holes for my gluten-free co-worker. So, as if shopping until 9pm wasn't enough last night, I stayed up until 11pm baking! Oh, and we have a lunch Friday where we're encouraged to bring in dessert. I don't know if that gets me off the hook for that, but let's just say there's only so much I can do!
Oh, and as I mentioned, Jacob has two basketball games tonight night that we just found out about Tuesday (this league's last-minute scheduling is frustrating, and apparently tournaments are no better), so I ended up taking a last minute half day off work because Carter is also marching in his toy solider thing this afternoon. I was just going to work from home after that, but with the quick transition into getting ready to leave basketball, I figured I'd just take the time and not worry about the work. But of course, work is busy, too, so there is literally an endless supply of stuff to be thinking about right now.
I love Christmas. I do. We're getting so close and I know the kids are excited, and I am too. I just wish the to-do lists weren't so long and so full of things that could potentially disappoint people or make the holiday less than enjoyable for them. All of these things are part of the process and therefore the holiday season wouldn't be the same without them, so I'm trying to maintain my composure and revel in the fact that it does all somehow get done each year. But I'm concerned. There's a lot to do and minimal energy and time to do it. And by the time I'm putting my feet up on the 23rd (for five minutes after midnight before I drag myself off to bed) with just the Christmas lights on and the gifts under the tree, to take pictures and revel in the feeling of being (mostly) done, the rest that follows will happen so quickly that I'll barely know what hit me. Then another Christmas will be past.
I was looking through pictures the other day from when Jacob did the soldier march, and as I scrolled through the rest of the December pictures and was reminded of what he got for Christmas that year, I was a bit shocked. I mean, in many ways I feel every bit of those five years. But on the other hand, I can't believe Carter is that same age now. They are such different kids that the comparison is really futile, but still...how is littlest boy in those pictures now the same age Jacob was, and Jacob a legit big kid? It's mind-blowing. It really makes you realize how few of these little kid Christmases we have left, so I'm trying to savor all of the little things--Advent calendars, cookie making, toy buying, stocking stuffers, and anything else that's special about this phase of life--as I know that before we know it we'll have teenagers we have to drag out of bed, or college kids that we'll just be happy to have home. I'm just not sure how it's happened, but time is really flying.
Well, I finished my lunch and my half day is calling. Time to run errands and make it to school by 2pm!
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