My Christmas Break Plans

Yesterday, my girls finished school and are now off for Christmas break.

Which means that I am off for Christmas break too!

I look forward to this all season long, because for the majority of bloggers or influencers, October, November and December are the busiest months of the year.

You’ll correctly guess, based on the catalogs jamming up your mailbox, the increase of deal emails in your inbox and the overwhelming number of sponsored Instagram Stories popping up, that brands have their biggest marketing budgets in Q4 (because it’s when the majority of people do the most spending), so if you’re creating content online, it’s one of the busiest times of the year and the income from this quarter helps offset the times of year when marketing budgets are much slimmer.

I also get more than the usual amount of DMs and messages asking for help picking out a book for a child or whether a Yoto Player or Toniebox is better (spoiler: I’ll tell you Yoto every time!) or if I have a coupon code for our beloved bell set.

I love answering those questions and helping as much as I can – I feel like I have the best job on earth – so I’m happy to do it.

AND it is very busy.

For the last five or six years, my team and I have worked incredibly hard to get everything for the rest of the year planned ahead of time so that when my girls get out of school, I can also unplug and soak up this glorious time of year with them.

I LIVE for these weeks with no schedule, no deadlines, and plenty of time to read in bed, play hours of games with the girls, and go on some adventures.

And this year’s been EXTRA fun because my brother and his wife have been here for the past several days to spend some time with us before they spend Christmas with my parents. So I actually finished most of my work a few days ago and we’ve been partying it up here!

Here are my plans for this year’s Christmas Break:

My Christmas BREAK Plans

1. Ski! My brother loves to ski so we’ve planned several ski days while they’re here and I hope to fit in a few more between Christmas and New Years! It’s always such a delight to get outside even in the cold and get some fresh air and remember how to ski again after many months away from the slopes.
2. Hang photos in the girls’ hallway. I printed off these 8×8 photos (with frames!) and picked them up the same day at CVS. I did 8 originally and I’m planning to do 8 more because they’re such an epic price (less than $7 each printed and framed with the hanging hardware included with the code 70WALL) and do a fun travel/family memory wall in the hallway between my girls’ bedrooms.
3. Make my Paris family video. I did a video for our trip to Japan but I haven’t yet done our Paris one and the girls keep asking about it! I’m hoping to set aside one afternoon during Christmas break to get it done – it’s like a gift to the whole family! Details about how I make our family videos here! 
4. New Year’s Eve Fondue. A few years ago, my girls started talking endlessly about our traditional New Year’s Eve Fondue (which. . .  I didn’t realize was a tradition after one year), so we invited a bunch of cousins over and had a really fun New Year’s Eve. Now it truly is a tradition, so come New Year’s Eve there WILL be chocolate fondue and a big spread of dipping items.
5. Watch The Hunger Games. Ella read the whole Hunger Games series over the last few weeks and now she’s dying to see the movies. We watched all the Lord of the Rings with her last Christmas break so this will be another fun trilogy to watch together while we’re off.
6. Go through all the books in my office. I get a LOT of books as part of my job and they’ve really been piling up this fall. My windowsill has STACKS of them and it is time to go through and organize them and decide which ones to keep and which ones to donate.
7. Plan for 2024. One of my favorite traditions during Christmas break is the day that Bart and I spend together working on our goals and plans for the upcoming year. I wrote a whole post about that here, if you’re curious.
8. Read! Of course reading is on my list for the break. I’m especially hoping to get to a few of the books recommended on this list of Kindle Unlimited Christmas books!

What’s on your list for Christmas Break? I’d love to hear how you’re spending any time off!

 

if you liked this post about my christmas break plans, you might also like these other posts:

• More than you ever wanted to know about my houseplants
• 50 Books for Couples to Read Together
• 7 Reasons I’d Pick Yoto in a Yoto Vs Tonie Match Up

Photo by Heather Mildenstein