Christmas Prep Day

Growing up, Christmas Eve always doubled as Christmas Prep Day. You know, the day you spend cleaning bathrooms, adding bows to presents, grocery shopping and in general making your home and family ready for The Big Day. Since Mom hosts the big Lowe Family Christmas, Prep Day was serious business. (Though I'll admit, twice in college I bowed out in favor of the Texans home football game.)

Since Ross' family celebrates Christmas Eve, that makes today Prep Day. It's not quite lunchtime and I've...

• been grocery shopping so I could...
• go from step 1 to step 2 in my cake ball recipe (which I did, successfully I think), more on this later today or tomorrow
• selected a Paula Deen cheesey broccoli dish for Christmas Eve dinner. You can't lose with Paula Deen.
• cleaned the master bathroom
• walked the puppy
• got laundry and dishes going in their respective washers
• put an all Christmas music playlist on the stereo to complement my lit tree and several Christmas scented Yankee Candles

But that's just the start of Prep Day. After what I expect to be a lovely lunch with Brittany and her ever-growing preggers belly (I'm touchin' it, don't worry, I know God created adorable pregger bellies so we could all touch them. Let's hope baby KC is kickin!), I'll need to move on to cake ball step 3. This is the step I am most anxious about so cross your fingers it works out. (Cake balls are an experiment this Christmas. To quote my husband "why must every holiday dish be an experiment?" Because baby, that makes it more fun!)

Then cleaning our bedroom, tidying up the living room, evaluating the present situation, a good workout at the gym to balance out all the delicious holiday food I plan to stuff myself with over the next two days, and eventually, once cake balls are totally complete, cleaning the kitchen.

Normally "cleaning the bathroom" and "tidying up the living room" would feel like chores. But there's something strange about pairing these things with Christmas music. When I do that it just feels like part of the holiday fun and routine.

Maybe I'll try cleaning house to Christmas music in July and see if it has the same effect.