I mean what I say in the title because believe me, none of what I’m about to write would be true if we didn’t have the imminent arrival of a baby to motivate us.

We are completely finished with Christmas presents – not just purchased and/or made, but wrapped and delivered.  I mailed my family’s presents in November.  I was done wrapping all of our other presents over a week ago.  We’ve now delivered them to family around here so that, in the event that B2 comes before Christmas, we don’t even have to worry about them.

(OK, actually, I just remembered that I have one present I still have to wrap for Ellie but if it doesn’t get wrapped in time, I don’t think she’ll notice.) 

I don’t think I can even express how nice it is to have everything finished before late night Christmas Eve.  I’m remembering Christmas 2009, when I undertook a really ambitious list of presents to sew and then really only managed to get them all sewn because we had four snow days just before Christmas.  Four!  When did I really think I was going to get them done?

We consciously started planning for Christmas extra early this year and we also consciously asked ourselves, “How can we bless our families and express our great love for them but still radically simplify our gift giving?”  It made a huge difference.

And now, I’m just grateful for the peace and calm that I feel…

until of course I have a bit of a twinge of pain and then I think, “Was that a contraction? MAYBE!!?!?!?!?!” and then we’re off on a whole different topic! 🙂

I do want to remember this for next year though because who says that this can’t be our practice every year, even without a Christmas baby to motivate us?