Pulse Check

Hey, there! Happy Wednesday…

How is everybody doing? How is your holiday stress level?

I am doing MUCH better today. Yesterday I was a bit overwhelmed.

I had 150 blank envelopes staring at me.

A {Famous American} report for Elliott that was hanging over my head.

NO idea of what was for dinner.

Wondering when {or more like IF} we’re going to get lights up on the front of the house. {kids begging}

Making an appointment for an oil change.

Calling for kennel reservations.

I kinda just wanted to surf Pinterest. Or bake. Or call friends over the miles.

But I cranked up the Christmas tunes on our Direct TV channel and got to addressing, folding, stuffing, sealing and printing return address labels.

It took me practically the whole 6 hours that the kiddos are in school to get these cards done. I am not complaining at all….my heart was so full when I was done. As I addressed each one, I thought about that person/couple/family ~ so great.

I also managed to throw a pork tenderloin {cut in half} into the crock pot with a can of kidney beans, some frozen corn, the tail end of a jar of salsa and half a package of taco seasoning and crossed my fingers. We had taco shells, flour tortillas, shredded cheese, light sour cream and a big bottle of Cholula so we were set for dinner. {the pork turned out AWESOME, btw}

Theeennnn, I picked up the kids from school and I got stressed about Elliott’s report. She is having a friend come over today and her speech is tomorrow so I had it in my head that we had to have it all done, rehearsed, rehearsed again and again last night because today was going to be a lost day with the friend here and catechism this afternoon. Plus I am gone this evening and wouldn’t be able to go over it with her. I was stressing. I just kept telling myself that she is in 2nd grade, not grad school. I went over the rubric and felt a little better about things.

We had worked on the poster over the weekend and had that almost wrapped up…

{glittered Olympic Rings}

We gathered all our info on Mary Lou Retton and she sat down and typed it into the right format ~ intro, topic sentence, body, summary, etc. all by herself. I sat and finished the Christmas card pile while she hunted and pecked for all the keys {so cute…”let’s see, where is the ‘k’? oh, here it is!”} Kind of a painful process, but I was not going to type it for her.

After dinner we went over the speech A. LOT. It has to be 2-3 minutes and they are supposed to memorize it for maximum points….this was the part that I was the most stressed about.

She clipped her finished poster onto the barstool, stood next to it and I timed and recorded her on my phone.

A. LOT.

Each time she slowed down, memorized more and became more comfortable. It was time for her to take a bath and she said she wanted to do it again without the cheat sheet….how could I say no to that?

SHE. NAILED. IT.

Exactly 2 minutes and the only thing she got wrong was Mary Lou’s year of birth making her 4 years older than she really is ~ sorry about that, Mrs. Retton!

I was SO proud of her {immediately tried to upload the video to Facebook!} and immediately a weight was lifted off my shoulders. It was like I was stressing for nothing.

Lesson learned? I think so.

It’s not that I underestimated her, I just felt pressured from all the other things that I needed to do. Everything got checked off: taking the car in tomorrow and the boys have a room at the inn for when we go away for a few days.

Anticipation is always much worse than the actual thing, isn’t it? I guess that was the point of this whole post.

We still have no lights on the front of the house, but we DO have some poinsettias at the front door.

This morning I dropped the kids off {and remembered it was jersey/sports day!!} and high tailed it to the post office to get some postage for our cards and get our overseas letters off. I grabbed a large fountain Coke Zero and sat in my car listening to KOST, stamped the cards and drove through and sent them off!

Now my stress level is back under control.

For a day or so any way.

I’ll take it.

How do you deal with the demands of the holiday season and juggle them with the daily stuff that needs to also get done? I am finding that no matter how much you plan ahead, life gets stressful and I deliberately try to keep it simple.

{I remembered jerseys, now I have to remember today is early release!}

*****

I hope you aren’t letting the season stress you out too much. If you feel overwhelmed, just sit down and make a list of the things that MUST get done that day. Take a deep breath, brew a cup of hot tea and check off one chore at a time.

That’s all you can do.

XOXO