Merry List-mas!!

Now that Halloween is over it has become painfully obvious that the next holiday on the Canadian calendar is Christmas. The Christmas flyers are coming daily, the holiday commercials are starting to creep in and the panic is just starting to settle in nicely now.

The only thing that I can do to ease the anxiety is to build a shit load of lists. Nothing beats a good list to help wrap your head around what needs to be done! And if one list is good then lots of lists must be even better, right? In fact it's almost to the point where I need a list to keep track of all the lists I'll need.

First I'll need a list of gifts. This isn't as simple as making a single list. No way! My list will be broken down into many sublists. First there will be the list for the kids gifts. This is the most expensive list and therefore it is important to get this list together as soon as possible. We will also need a list of Santa's gifts, (this might require two lists. One for presents and one for stockings). Then there is the list for Jules's gifts, this one will have to be for my eyes only. Jules will need to create a similar list for me.

The lists don't end there!

We will also need to prepare some food lists. This will include a list of the baking we will be doing. Once we have that list made we can create yet another list, that of ingredients needed to produce the above baked treats. We will also need to figure out our Christmas menu so we can develop a shopping list for the meals we will be serving for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Usually we prepare really well for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day but fail to plan for Boxing Day. Nobody wants to go out for groceries the day after Christmas and we are almost guaranteed to be broke by that time anyway. Since the kids don't go for Turkey leftovers they usually end up having something lame like Mac and Cheese. Something about KD for the holidays just isn't right! This year we need to have a meal planned for this day.

Once these lists are compiled we will have a ball park idea of how much this mess is going to cost us this year. Without the lists we don't know what to expect and that makes things a lot scarier. Having the lists gives us the advantage of being able to see the enemy.

I think tonight will be a good night for list making. I'm going to fire off a bunch of blank spreadsheets right now.

How is it that every year I can look forward to an event that causes me so much stress??