The Goose Is Getting Fat!

Now that Livy is a fully sentient being with the capability of understanding and remembering holiday traditions, I'm trying to be purposeful in determining how we celebrate.  Halloween was a huge deal this year, with 2 parties here, 1 at a friend's house, and trick-or-treating with school, friends, and Daddy & Mommy.  Livy loved all the excitement, and, because Halloween is my favorite holiday, so did I.  It was a great month of spooky fun, and I'm sad to see it go.

So, to replace it, I'm starting to plan our Christmas holidays.  I'm usually a grinchy Christmas grump, but if I'm ever going to be Mother of the Year, that's got to change.  In spite of my grumpiness I've always wanted to do an Advent calendar, not because I believe in Advent, but just for the opportunity to amp up Christmas anticipation.  Because candy makes Livy a crazy beast, though, a traditional Advent calendar is out of the question.  Instead, I'm stealing this fine blog's idea instead and doing a Christmas/Winter/Holiday book Advent calendar.  Because Livy's school (Owned and run by her Oma - see how awesome that is?) participates in Scholastic book orders, I just put in a mammoth order for 24 holiday books to wrap and clothespin to some red yarn strung garland-style in our living room.  Each day after breakfast we'll open a new book, read it together, and add it to our growing stockpile of Christmas goodness.  The final book will be "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," of course, because it's that kind of attention to detail that makes you a wonderful parent in the eyes of blog readers everywhere.

I'm also going to steal Mrs. Miller's fine family tradition of watching Christmas movies together and watch at least one ever weekend in December with SLB and, depending on her attention span, Olivia.  I already love Elf, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, A Christmas Story, and Love, Actually, so that's a great start.  And it just wouldn't be Christmas without rereading Mrs. Miller's treatise on whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas classic, which might actually rival "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" for holiday reverence in this household.  Alan Rickman, apparently, is the reason for the Christmas cinematic season.  Who knew?

That's our preemptive strike against grinchiness, people.  What are your holiday plans?  Do you have any fine suggestions I can add to those above?  I think we can all agree that I need all the help I can get.