Holiday Tradition #8: Christmas cards

Here is where I sat this afternoon while my child was clearly not napping in the room next door--at my desk, working on the Christmas Tradition I Love to Hate, or, the prepping before mailing of Christmas letters.

Holiday letters, in my opinion, are for sending to nearly everyone in your address book, regardless of whether you have talked to them in the past year or not. Or the past five years. Like the guy who married us five years ago and his wife, whom we have not seen in, well, five years. Every year, this means that my fat pack of 100 holiday photo cards is always waiting for me at the Costco photo center in late November, despite the fact that no matter how lofty my goals, they will not be mailed until a week and a half before Christmas. Because honestly, going through your address book annually requires a lot of fact checking and always makes me wish I could hire a personal assistant...let's see, Aunt Louise passed away in July, and did Bryan's cousin Dawn move this year, or was it last? Anyway, you can see the amount of work involved, not to mention the hand cramping and OH MY GOD, do you have any idea what a postage stamp costs these days??

I know, I know. *whiner*

Anyway, address-research and carpal tunnel aside, I always enjoy sitting down to write the annual Christmas letter, although I'll admit, I'm struggling a bit with it this year. I'm never one to go the 'let me present to you my perfect life' letter, as in something way too perky with too many exclamation points and statements like 'our daughter is just perfect! a little princess! never has temper tantrums and she potty trained in two days, can you even believe it?!' that make you want to stick a fork down your throat. Of course, there's always the opposite approach, the one where you touch on every misfortune ever graced on you and leave people questioning humanity in the wake of this festive season. But we all know that's what I have this blog for, so don't worry about wanting to drink excessively or anything when my letter arrives in your mailbox, okay?

Some years it's harder than others to hit that happy medium, and this happens to be one of them. And since giving up the binky appears to be the catalyst for my child also shaking that pesky afternoon-nap-habit, I will be finishing the work sitting on that desk sometime in mid-January and oh, my Grandma will be disappointed.