If your situation is anything like mine, soon your kids will be home from school for a two-week Christmas break. The way the dates fall this year, one of those weeks is BEFORE Christmas. For me, that means one week of being home all day with three overly-excited for Christmas, trapped indoors because of freezing cold temperatures, constantly needing a snack kids, that, even when they are having fun playing together, still sound like they are fighting.
You might be wondering how I will survive this ordeal and, if you’re in this situation, how you will too. This year, I came up with a five-part plan to survive Christmas break. Feel free to use, modify, share or ignore.
1. I’m going to do as much as I can, THIS WEEK while the kids are still in school.
Since I’ve ordered most of their gifts already, I plan to wrap all presents this week. Next week, I won’t have to lock myself in my bedroom to wrap presents, leaving me the option of locking myself in my bedroom simply to get away from my kids.
This week I’m also hoping to meal plan and grocery shop for many, if not all, of next week’s meals. It’s been a while since I’ve had to take all three kids to the grocery store, and I’d like to keep that streak alive if possible.
2. Before time runs out, I’m going to use Santa and our Elf on the Shelf to my advantage and get my kids to clean around the house as much as possible.
“Kids, if you’re borderline between being on the naughty list vs. being on the nice list, cleaning your rooms may just tip the scales in your favor.”
3. Speaking of cleaning, we’re going to spend plenty of time getting rid of old toys.
I’ll probably tell my kids matter-of-factly that we don’t have any room left in our house for new toys, UNLESS we get rid of some of our old ones. This could also be used as an opportunity for kids to learn a lesson about charities that accept gently used toys. The alphabet learning set with only 14 letters of the alphabet left just needs to go in the trash though.
4. Multiple trips to the public library.
*It’s warm.
*It will get us out of the house.
*They have daily activities for kids.
*It’s free.
Do you really need any more reasons than that to go to the library?
5. Misery loves company
Invite one of your friends over that is home with his or her kids too. If your kids are like mine, after a few days of just being around each other, they will jump at the opportunity to have a different person in the house to play and pick fights with.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Wish me luck and best of luck to you as well. If you have any other “survival” tips, please leave them in the comments section below.
Thanks,
Pete
