A little preface: I hate cooking. I'm not creative when it comes to cooking, I'm not good at it, and I don't enjoy it. When the kids were little – I have three – I tried harder to make memories with them by making premade cookies and box desserts. Now that they are older, all pretenses have fallen away.
Holiday season for us starts with Halloween. Followed by my birthday in November, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. We each get a holiday and choose what to do on that day. That includes which movie we will rent and which food place we will be ordering food from that night. My oldest son always gets Christmas because he actually does like to cook. So on that one, we all eat whatever he decides to cook for us.
I work in a nursing home, part time, so a lot of times I work at least a partial day on all the holidays. I love our holiday traditions; I don't have to stress about what to cook or what to do so my kids won't miss out. We're all still together. And after all, holidays are not supposed to be about the stress.
Another thing I do at Christmas is about the gift giving. I heard about this from a lady at church and thought it was genius, so I've been doing it since the kids were very small. Each year for Christmas, they get three gifts: a want, a need, and a spiritual gift. Disclaimer; I cheat with the over-sized stockings that I fill up with dollar tree gifts, but it still stays inexpensive and not any stress for me at all.
The holiday season is all about spending the time with the people you love. My kids and I have carved out our own little things and they work well for us. As long as my daughter doesn't get Halloween. She likes scary movies and the rest of us are big ol wusses!
Find Amy's story in the limited edition YA collection Written in the Stars!
