An Ode to the Christmas Bucket List

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O Christmas Bucket List

O Christmas Bucket List

How lovely are your checkmarks! 

It’s almost time for the holiday season!  All the hustle and bustle.  All the events and to-dos.  All the stress and exhaustion.  Oh, wait.  That’s not how Christmas is supposed to be! 

It’s taken me 40 years of life to realize a little bit of organization and preparation goes a long way! So last year, we created the first ever Blair Family Christmas Bucket List!  

We sat down as a family the weekend before Thanksgiving and came up with our list.  Yes, before Thanksgiving.  Now, hear me out, I’m a firm believer in Christmas is after Thanksgiving.  So we didn’t start DOING the list until after Thanksgiving.  We just did our prep work. 

We did, however, begin to complete our bucket list immediately after.  That gave us five full weekends to check items off our list.  By knowing in advance everything we wanted to do, we were able to plan and space them out.  This resulted in a more relaxed holiday season.  In years past, I feel like we’ve tried to cram about 18 things into about 3-5 days.  Our bucket list kept us on track and focused.  I truly enjoyed last year’s holiday season.  

The first weekend after Thanksgiving, we went to Woodland Lights. Going to see the lights at the park is a yearly tradition and we love it.  As much as we love it though, we usually go right before Christmas when time is valuable, it’s freezing cold, and very busy.  By going in November, it was just chilly and busy enough to feel festive but without the biting cold, long waits and the thoughts of a million other things I needed to be doing swirling in my head.  It was a truly enjoyable experience that really kicked off the holiday season. 

From that point on, we made a point to check another item off of our list every chance we had.  By being more intentional and prepared, we even were able to add in some new favorites!  2017 was the first year we went Light Up Middletown and made our first batch of reindeer food and went Caroling with our dance studio. 

Here are some of our favorite bucket list items.  What are yours?

  • Drink Hot Chocolate
  • Read a Christmas Story
  • Sing Christmas Carols
  • Make Cookies
  • Make Reindeer Food
  • Do a craft
  • Go to Woodland Lights
  • Go on a Christmas lights scavenger hunt (print a list from online out, drive around the neighborhood and see if you can find them all.  Make it extra fun by telling the kiddos to get their pjs on but instead of putting them in bed, put them in the van!)

 

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Amy Blair
Hello! My name is Amy! I am married to my wonderful husband who works at Target! How awesome is that!?! I have three very beautiful girls. Savannah is my oldest and my artistic one. Lacie is the middle one and is my wild child with the biggest heart. Emma is littlest one who acts and thinks like an adult. I work full time managing a team of specialists at a call center. I'm completely addicted to Iced Chai Lattes and Starbucks. I love getting out and about as much as our hectic schedule allows - either exploring new places or revisiting our tried and true favorites!

4 COMMENTS

  1. My daughter might be a bit young for this during this holiday season [pretty sure her whole list would read: watch Mickey and eat donuts lol] but I’d still love to do one of these for our family!

    • Lol very true! I usually write down our bucket lists – so they are neat and easy to read lol-but a lot of the ideas come from my husband and I. As the girls get older, they get better at remembering their favorites from the previous year 🙂

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