It's beginning to look a lot like spring?

Here we are in our second holiday season in Georgia and I just can't get used to it. There is something very strange about hanging your Christmas lights in a tee shirt and shorts when it is 70 degrees outside. The carols are on the radio, the tree is up, and all I can think is that I wish the pool was open! A big part of the problem may be the fact that we are going VERY light on gifts this year so I have not been holiday shopping. I will have to make the trip to the mall for the annual pictures with Santa, but I won't be doing much shopping.

As most of you know, I have 3 boys. You may be wondering how I am able to 'skip' Christmas this year. We sat the boys down and talked to them about the holidays. We gave the choice between the usual holiday gifts or a trip. They went crazy for the trip idea. I can't say that I was very surprised. The simple fact is that they have plenty of toys and video games already. In fact, many of the Christmas and Birthday gifts from last year are still in the boxes. Even with the bigger rooms that they have down here, there is only so much stuff a kid can have. So, we decided to go to Walt Disney World instead.

There will be a few gifts for Hanukkah and Christmas, after all it is the baby's first holiday and my 6 year old still believes in Santa, but we are keeping it very light. I thought that maybe the boys would start to get bummed out as we got closer to the holidays and they realized that they weren't getting a lot of gifts. I have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that they seem more excited about the trip than they ever were about Christmas morning. Christmas day may seem a little blah without all the gifts and no out of town guests, but we will have fun planning for our trip. Also, I think we will have a traditional Jewish Christmas with Chinese food and a movie.

So, it isn't quite Christmas down here in the land of peaches, but we are making the best of it.