Sunday, December 10, 2006

I'm almost ready for Christmas

I'm a bit winded from the frenetic activity of preparing for Christmas, sorting and throwing out collected stuff (not genealogy!) as we start our home remodel, shopping for kitchen cabinets and appliances for the remodel, and from rooting on my Chargers.

My major preparations for Christmas are almost over. I worked the last four weeks on:

1) Writing and printing the family Christmas letter - two pages with photos - that we snail mail to about 100 people. This includes making the envelope labels, writing the letter, and printing them two-sided - about a one week job with editsd and rewrites. BTW, if you want a copy of this, please email me at rjseaver(at)cox.net and i'll send a PDF version.

2) Writing and printing the 16-page Seaver-Richmond Journal, which I described here. Writing the text and inserting the pictures is about a two week job, including editing. I print this on my HP color printer at home, and usually have a 10% scrap rate as I (or the printer) mess up the double sided pages. This year, I lost only one sheet of paper (out of 400). The secret was, I think, to let the pages dry out for a day before printing the second sides. I collated them and stapled them. This was essentially a 3 day job to print it all out.

3) Preparing the 9x12 envelopes with the family letter, the Journal, a Christmas card, and, in some cases, a page of photos, then labelling and stamping the works took several hours last night. They go in the mail tomorrow. Whew.

So that's done, and now the major struggle is to find some Christmas gifts for my Angel Linda, who works so hard and helps so many people. I think she wants clothes and jewelry, and not computer related things this year.

One more chore - add the downloaded Christmas songs to my iPod! And the downloaded Genealogy podcasts from the Guys, Myrtle and the FGS conference. Then I can listen to them on our trip north to see the kids and grandkids over the holidays. My wife can listen to Dr. Laura, and i'll listen to my iPod. Does Rush have a free podcast? I'll have to check.

Are all of your Christmas chores done? What do you have left to do? Do you like to shop at Christmas? I love to go to the shopping centers and see the families with their kids go see Santa.

1 comment:

Jasia said...

I'm behind with my holiday preparations as usual. But I am making headway. I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping. I've got the packages for the three families in Poland I send to in the mail :-) My tree is up and decorated as is my house. I've gotten started on wrapping family gifts but still have a long way to go with that. I have my Christmas cards designed and printed but only the ones to Poland have been sent.

I haven't started designing my family online photo greeting yet. I need to do that next. I still have to plan my Christmas Eve menu. We'll have some traditional favorites but I like to try some new dishes too. And then there's the baking... I'm going have to start that soon too.

It will all get done. It always does. But this next week will be a very busy one for me. But I'll be enjoying it!