C-Minus One Week

At this time next week, Santa will be busy putting Nia and Nate’s presents under the tree, filling their stockings with all sorts of goodies and snacking on cookies that the sweeties left for him and the reindeer.

Right now though, Santa is stressing – worried about what to cook for dinner that day, what kinds of cookies to attempt to bake and whether to pay the extra ten bucks to send presents in the mail express or priority. I mean, the pressure of deciding how to ship something really torments me – I pick out what I think are pretty cool gifts, go through the checkout process and then have to pick which shipping method will get it to the special someone on time.  It’s something that forces me to use my fingers to count the business days it says it will take to get there and then I round up a day just in case.

Now I’ve cooked Christmas dinner before but for some reason I’m really thinking hard about this year’s.  I think it’s because that’s all a part of my new job now – before with work, I hardly had anytime to shop and or I was working on the day so we just kept it simple.  Last year we were spoiled because my mom was with us and she took care of EVERYTHING.  It was AWESOME.  Now though, it’s all on me to make sure our meal is yummy and special enough to be enjoyed every Christmas. I know I’m making the Rafiani recipe homemade spaghetti (what I’ve always had on Christmas) and I’m going to try and bake a ham (I’m nervous about this because I never have by myself) and I also must have Wedding Soup (another Rafiani family tradition).

As far as the cookies go – I’m scared to death.  Last year was the first year I even made homemade cookies for the Holidays and my mom really did all the work.  My sister is a baking queen – she’s the reason I’m even attempting this. I plan to start baking Tuesday.  We’ll see how they end up then…

What’s funny about all of this is how Nia doesn’t care a thing about any of it.  All she’s worried about is that Santa’s not going to bring her a Little Mermaid castle – you better believe Santa got that stress over with and is now just waiting on shipping!