Crisis Management Failure

We started planning for Christmas far enough in advance to get everything done that we wanted to do. We planned the cards, we planned the family gifts that we would hand make, we made our lists of gifts for others (well, some of us did better than others). We looked at our schedules and planned when we would travel. In short, our planning was well done.

Our execution however sucked big time.

The cards are sitting behind me. Signed, but unsent. The hand made family gifts have been cannibalized to feed a surprise dinner party that occurred last night. Risa is on her way to the Twin Cities to see family members down there and instead of giving them our home made food baskets, she will have to stop at a grocery store down there to see if she can purchase a replacement. The focaccia bread I planned on making refused to rise on Christmas eve. I baked it anyway yesterday and it came out too dense and not tasty enough. I spent all day Christmas Eve running around buying the gifts I still had not purchased instead of making focaccia bread. In short, the run up to Christmas was a blur of blind panic.

On the bright side, we now have a whole lot of very spicy spaghetti sauce on hand, twenty-four mason jars, and twelve reusable grocery tote bags, and four flat focaccia loaves. We will try to repair our gift bags/contents and get them out by new years. Maybe.

Christmas morning was actually quite nice this year. It was just us and my two kids (plus the ten pound poodle and the fifteen pound cat). The poodle helped unwrap the gifts with vigor though she refused to wear her santa hat for longer than a few seconds.

That's the news from the casa on the hill overlooking the big inland sea. Have a great holiday all.