It's been a bit of a whirlwind December leading up to Christmas and New Years. We managed to do all the laundry from our trip but it's still piled up in the back bedroom waiting to be folded. In September we bought a fake (ahem, faux) tree from Costco and once we got it up and out of the box it took me two solid weeks to get all the ornaments on it. We didn't manage to get any garland for the front door so I finally gave in and bought a wreath from Whole Foods - better something than nothing - for $12.99. Our stockings went up (not by the chimney, but rather the TV) about a week and a half ago. We have our holiday cards ready to go out but for the life of me I can't get any stamps. Every place that isn't the post office that normally sells them has been sold out. I tried stopping in to the post office in our neighborhood but apparently they are paranoid and even the stamp machines are locked up tight until someone comes and unlocks the doors. Maybe I'll call them "happy new year" cards since that's about the time people will start getting them. We just barely hit the deadline for shipping gifts to my sister and mom without having to spend more on transportation than the gifts themselves cost. All in all, we're pretty much failures this holiday season. Well, not entirely failures. We did manage to bake our cucciadati with Alan's mom this year. I helped at the beginning but after being told I was cutting them too small I decided my skills were more suited for decorating the tree, so Alan and his mom did the batch of 300 or so cookies.
My biggest failure of the holiday season? I bought Alan the *exact same gift* as I got him last year. Yup, that's right. I totally forgot that I bought him a tea fixing thingymajig and even though I've seen him use it I went ahead and bought it for him again. I was quite horrified when on Thursday or Friday night we were standing in the kitchen and I looked to my right and saw it had been used earlier in the week.
Me: Where'd you get that?
Him: Get what?
Me: That (pointing at tea maker)
Him: You got it for me last Christmas.
Me. Um, oh. <red face, shame>