My rules for an awesome Christmas!

Christmas is a month long of traditions and I love it! My rules for an awesome Christmas are as follows:

1. Christmas music is the only acceptable sound that should come from my home from November 28-January 1st

2. A tree and decoration must be up no later than the Saturday following Thanksgiving

3. Each week something homemade and sweet must be baked in the oven.

4. Even if I have to open the doors and windows, a fire shall be in the fireplace most evenings and occasional mornings.

5. Coffee. Every. Day.

6.  Even if I am done Christmas shopping I must visit a shopping mall

7. Reading a novel to the kids by the fire each evening

8. No School from the 2nd week of December to the 2nd week of January

9. Parties!!

10. A visit to see Santa!

11. My Birthday is an integral part of my Christmas month and I have embraced it and made it my own with time cut out for just me and my little family. 

I look forward to our Secret Angel game with the kids. Each family draws a name and we do things for each other all month. We then buy a small gift for our person and reveal it on Christmas Eve Eve. We also watch a Chrsitmas movie and get new P.J.s. I almost look forward to December 23rd more than the actual day!

Truth in The Tinsel has been a new tradition this month. So much fun to create an ornament each day! Christmas Eve brunch is also a new thing since my Sister in Law is a nurse and works on Christmas day:(. 

Today I will join the Be The Match group. One little cheek swab and I will forever be a bone marrow donor. I am excited to see if I'm a match for Michelle, but I was a little apprehensive to be a match for another person, a stranger. It's a big commitment and I keep trying to think if there was a stranger that was a match for my friend I would absolutely expect them to donate to save her life. So what's my problem??? I'm afraid.  Bottom line, I worry about the effect of the whole procedure on my family. Being an organ donor was a no brainer (pun intended), it just seems selfish to keep perfectly working organs in a body that's already gone. But to take something from your healthy body and share parts of it with a total stranger, now that was a different thought process. I'm absolutely ok with it now, I've read about the process, I'm ready for the possibility of a match and therefore we are going this morning to be tested. It just took some time getting used to the idea.