The holiday season is in full swing here at Casa HickJu, and I am loving it. My only complaints are that as usual, I seem to have spent far too much money, after promising myself – as I do each year – that THIS YEAR, I will spend less. And secondly, it’s going way too fast

To point #1, the overspending, it’s very, very hard not to go overboard on holiday spending when you love Christmas like I do. It’s the only time each year when I really go all out on “stuff.” I am very much not a “stuff” person; we have a lot of hand me down furniture, and I don’t have jewelry to speak of or lots of clothing (although I do love clothes and if I had plenty of money to spend on them, I certainly would. But I don’t) I very, very rarely buy my children any sort of “between times” toys or superfluous clothing (meaning between birthdays or Christmas) In fact they would tell you that I am downright cheap compared to their friends’ parents.

And this year, money is VERY tight because after my bizarre, major illness from October, I have 5k or more in out of pocket medical costs (after insurance payout) for which we are responsible. Sigh. We also had some other large, unexpected expenses this year that have been tricky to manage. I can’t say this hasn’t made for a somewhat stressful 2009, and for the first time ever, we had to stick to buying gifts for all of the children in our large, extended family instead of buying for both children and all the grown-ups, too.

Despite this, I still likely spent too much on Christmas this year. Good thing Santa supplies most of the gifts, and I only have to cover some. As I always tell the kids when they occasionally suggest that Santa might not be real (blasphemy!), do they really think that I could pay for all the stuff they find under the tree on Christmas morning? I think not!

But anyway, yeah, the holiday season is zipping by far too quickly. It always seems to go by too fast because my older kids spend every other week with their father, so I only get tham half the time in the run-up to Christmas, and seeing the kids enjoy the decorations and the popcorn and the Christmas movies and the tree are what make Christmas so fun. So in the past seven years, since we started this schedule where we split the holidays, Christmastime has always seemed somewhat abbreviated to me. This year, of course, C is old enough to enjoy all of the above, and she lives at our house all the time, so it’s a little better, but even all these years later, and even knowing that it’s the best option – because we obviously want to make sure that the kids get plenty of time during the holidays in both of their homes – I miss them extra during the holidays. They are at their Dad’s this week, and then they will return home Sunday and stay until Christmas Day afternoon, when they will go back to their other house for the remainder of the holiday. I cannot WAIT to get them home on Sunday evening, and start our holiday season in earnest. I know that C can’t wait to have them here either. She’s getting old enough now that she really misses “Sissy,” “Ewwiot” and “Henwy” when they are not here. She prefers to have her sibs about. (H, by the way, finished high school in November, and is currently spending his time couch surfing and attending concerts across the state of Tennessee. Don’t get me started…)

A few holiday snaps from the week past (and remember that I tend to do all of my photo taking with the crummy camera on my BlackBerry, so I end up with quantity over quality. Oh well.)

Stockings hung by the chimney with care.

Jon and me at the Ackermann Holiday Party last night. (Hats courtesy of Flickr/Piknik)

C loves the Christmas snow globes. She’s on her Daddy’s lap here.

I asked Dr. Neighbor if he thought he could make some toffee with chocolate crust on top, like my mother always makes during the holidays, and without a recipe or even going to the store for ingredients, he whipped some right up for me. It’s super tasty! He’s awesome like that. Here he is in his candymaking workshop – AKA his kitchen.