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EP 12: The Holiday Haze - Strategies for Setting Business and Family Expectations Around the Holidays
146 Plays1 year ago
We're back with another packed episode of The Business Playdate, and this week, Lindsay and Betsy discuss a topic we can all relate to - the chaos and overwhelm that is the holiday season as a busy business owner, wife, mom, and mental load keeper.
Listen in as they share some strategies that work for them in preparing for time off during the holidays from their clients, holding space for what you want for your little family during the Christmas season, and some of their favorite seasonal traditions.
They also talk about the stress of trying to make sure everything is taken care of (i.e., present buying) while establishing traditions with their kids and learning not to feel guilty for everything not being "Instagram perfect" all the time - because no one has that figured out!
This is a great episode for anyone looking to relate to real-life scenarios of two busy business owners who are just trying to make the holidays special for their kids in their own little imperfect ways.
Follow us online & come say hi!
- The Business Playdate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebusinessplaydate/
- Lindsay White's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindsaywhite.co/
- Betsy Moorehead's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betsymoorehead.biz/
- Learn more about Lindsay's marketing agency here: https://thewhitelabelcreative.com/
- Learn more about Betsy's marketing services here: https://betsymoorehead.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Business Playdate Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Business Playdate, a podcast hosted by Lindsay White and Betsy Moorehead, two internet strangers turned business besties. We're two marketing professionals living across the country, raising our kiddos while running our own individual businesses. We built these businesses based on our experiences working in corporate management roles with the end goal to be able to show up for our families first. And we did it. We're so happy you're here with us. Now let's get into this week's episode.
Life Updates and Changes
00:00:31
Speaker
Hey guys, welcome back to the business play date. We are in the last episode of November. Oh my gosh. Where is the year gone?
00:00:41
Speaker
I mean, we launched this September 15th, right? Yeah. So this has been almost like 10 full weeks, maybe. This is crazy. It's so wild. I know. How are things going for you? We haven't just caught up on here in a while. I know. Things are good. This episode right now is the very last episode we're recording from my apartment. So that's really exciting. By the time this comes out, I will be moved, hopefully.
00:01:07
Speaker
The way the last 11 months have gone, who really knows? But hopefully, I'll be in my new house. Well, I saw you post an Instagram story about the lighting in your new office. I'm so jealous. It looks beautiful. Oh my gosh, I was so happy and pleased with it. I was like, look at this. I did notice that there's like, I guess, one of the flaws with rooms with just full windows. Just windows, yeah. Is that you get weird shadows at certain times of day. So I was like, OK, I might need to get some blinds or something for this room.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah. Are you going to be facing the windows or will your back be to the windows? Like how you said it. I'm going to face the windows with my face out there. Yes. I love that. I love looking out the window when I'm working. My old office looked out the window and I got to see the people walking. It's just kind of nice. You get to see the dogs and the birds. I do love looking at the window and people watching. It's a favorite pastime. It is. It is definitely a favorite pastime. I'm excited. It'll be done hopefully.
00:02:07
Speaker
Hopefully the audio sounds good in the new house. We'll see. I bet it will. I bet it will. Um, yeah, it's been, I like, I think I was telling you like, it's just been like kind of crazy. I did two social events this week, like weeknight social events. And you know, your girl doesn't do that often. So I have just been like, Oh, like trying to catch up. Like my body's like slow down. You need to sleep. So last night I actually finally got like.
00:02:33
Speaker
some pretty decent sleep. It's so funny how I think back to like our twenties and I'm just like, how did we, how did we function? Great. Like we didn't have kids that woke us up early. We could like, you know, the responsibilities were fewer and far between, but my gosh, like, I don't know how we functioned on like little sleep and whatnot.
00:02:51
Speaker
Now it's like social all the time. So social. So I had a lot of fun. There's, we like, it kind of like kicked off the holiday season, which is, you know, on par with what we're going to talk about today.
Getting into the Holiday Spirit
00:03:01
Speaker
But, um, I went to like this really fun, like Christmas market this week with some girlfriends and.
00:03:06
Speaker
It just really got me in the holiday spirit. I love that. I actually finally put out fall decor inside the house because I needed something to do with my four-year-old the other day because we were stuck inside. I was like, here, help me put out some pumpkins and things like that. I'm not a huge decorator inside the house when it comes to the holidays.
00:03:29
Speaker
I put some stuff out and now I'm kind of like seeing everyone put up all their Christmas decor and we're hosting Christmas at our house this year. So I'm like, fun. Kind of want to like put up my tree soon. Yeah. I guess by the time this comes out, it will be acceptable for me, but I have a couple of things to say about all of this. The first is I'm also hosting Christmas and I'm extremely overwhelmed because I'm moving into a new house with like virtually no furniture. I did order like the main pieces, but I'm like, we're not going to have
00:03:57
Speaker
even close to what a home should have for furniture, and we're hosting. We do have a dining room table, and we do have chairs for the dining room table. Christmas or Thanksgiving? Oh, I'm sorry, Christmas. Oh, OK. I was like, whoa. No, thank God. Thank God, no. But I'm very overwhelmed by that. But it's funny. So you're talking about decorating the house with Ellie. And this kind of goes into our topic of the day. But I was asking my son, my four-year-old, what
00:04:23
Speaker
what are your favorite things about Christmas? Because I'm trying to manage the overwhelm I've got going on. I'm moving, I've got to host, I've got to do all these things. And I was like, what are your favorite things about Christmas? And he was like, well, I love the presents, obviously. Of course, yeah. Of course. And I was like, well, OK, besides the presents, like put that aside. And he was like, I love the decorations. And I was like, I wasn't expecting that. So now I feel like I really got to go all out, the decorations. I love that. I love that. And find them in all of our boxes. I'm just like not looking forward to trying to keep the baby away from the tree for over a month.
00:04:53
Speaker
That's my favorite. That's my favorite activity. I saw something really cool. If I can find it again, I'll have the link posted in the show notes. It was like a little string that you attach to the ornament and it has like a carabiner type of thing on it. Like a safety cord? Yeah. And it attaches it to the actual tree. Like you tighten it so it stays on there easier rather than just like a little like normal loop. The things that people invent. Right? That is just mind boggling.
00:05:23
Speaker
Well, good. Well, let's jump in now that we've kind of like prefaced with a little holiday talk here.
Managing Business During the Holidays
00:05:30
Speaker
So today we're going to jump in and I've like fun named this the holiday haze, you know, where it is the holiday. It is we are, this is the, I think this is coming out on the last day of November. So this should be November 30th when you're, when you're hearing this for the first time.
00:05:49
Speaker
you know, just like hit the ground running. We've had Thanksgiving, like we're full on Christmas season now. And when it comes to being a business owner and just like being a mom and like a functioning adult, a wife, like during the holiday season, it's just a lot. And so we wanted to
00:06:08
Speaker
dive into today talking about ways that we handle stuff and ways that you can handle things if you need to take some of these tips and hacks for your business or just for your life in general, like we were talking about as a mom and whatnot. So Lindsay, why don't you start off? How do you as a business owner, how have you handled the holidays and Christmas specifically, like two weeks around Christmas and New Year's? How have you handled that from a business perspective?
00:06:36
Speaker
I would say from how I have handled it versus how I hear other people handle it may be different. And in my thoughts and my, you know, where I think about taking time off for the holidays, I think there's kind of two distinct camps here. I think there is the person who takes the whole, you know, they're like, I'm taking two weeks off, which is great. Love that for you. And then there's the person who's like, I'm going to play in an advance and get all the work scheduled. So it goes out and I'm going to do that. And I think that those are two really great
00:07:06
Speaker
methods. But I also think that as business owners, we need to think about what's going to work for our business. And on Instagram, I hear a lot of people just preach, you know, take two weeks off, like you can do it. And it doesn't necessarily always work like that. So I have obviously two distinct business units. I have a digital products unit. And where I sell courses and digital products in that area, I can easily take off two weeks, you know, like that's
00:07:30
Speaker
I'm only letting myself down, you know, I can, I don't have any coaching calls scheduled around that time. I don't have anything, you know, I can take time away from Instagram, not a big deal. Um, but in the services bucket as an agency owner who servicing clients on retainer who are paying for that time, I can't necessarily do that unless I wanted to pro rate my services. Exactly. And so that's where I wouldn't say I've struggled.
00:07:56
Speaker
But I would say that that's something you need to take into consideration when you're thinking about how you're taking time off for the holidays or for really anything. So a couple of things that I've done over the years to make my life easier and better is when my clients sign a contract with me, there is a list of days that we take off. They are pretty normal days. They're nothing crazy.
00:08:17
Speaker
you know, market holidays, that sort of stuff. Um, but there, there's a list in there. So they're signing that contract immediately knowing like I'm not working, you know, Christmas Eve, Christmas. I'm not working New Year's Eve. I'm not working New Year's. Um, and when you say market holidays, you mean like, cause you're a lot of your clients are in the financial services, right? So like that, like the stock market, like when the market is not open, the market's not open. I'm not open. Um, and then I also take off banking holidays, which mostly are the same as market holidays, but there's a couple, there's like one or two extras for the banks.
00:08:46
Speaker
Um, and then I take off Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve because that's just a, that's a no from me. Um, and so that's an interesting, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but isn't it interesting? Like a lot of like some businesses, especially like corporate businesses don't take Christmas Eve off. No, no. I mean, markets are open or New Year's Eve. Yeah. So yeah, a lot of people don't. Um, so that's one thing is like they sign that, uh, I don't pro rate for those days off. Like that's just what it is. Um,
00:09:15
Speaker
but I do try to get everything kind of handled in advance. So I spend, I would say from this point in time, like November through December, I am talking with my clients about, you know, what does January one look like? What does it look like for you for the holidays? Like what are the things that we need to have?
00:09:32
Speaker
done in order to make sure that there's no fire drills happening for the rest of the year, because it's not just crazy for me, but it's also crazy for them. So I think kind of going into it with less of a scared mindset of like, Oh my gosh, I can't let my clients down. It's more of a, Hey client, me and you need to get together and figure out how we can help each other. Right. And like, that's the thing is it's, um, you were saying before, like you see on Instagram, like, Oh, you should take two weeks off. You're a business owner. You get to decide how much time you want off.
00:10:03
Speaker
But it's, that's kind of disrespectful to your clients, especially if you work in, like you were saying, like a services where they're paying you on a retainer for a month. Like you can't just expect that they're going to be okay with that. And especially if you're in a services like, like how you and I are, we do a lot of marketing consulting, marketing strategy of marketing management. And it's less of like, you know, if you have a very specific package that your clients are purchasing where it's like, you get, you know, 30 designed pins and you get,
00:10:32
Speaker
30 Pinterest captions and you can schedule in advance. Awesome. That's amazing. You can easily take two weeks off. But when you're in kind of the services avenue that you and I are in, I think it's a little more difficult. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree. And I would say bye.
00:10:48
Speaker
situation like the last, this will be my third holiday season as a business owner is pretty similar. Last year was a little different because I had a brand new baby. So I was kind of technically on maternity-ish leave, but I was still working. And one of, like what I've found is that
00:11:09
Speaker
My clients that are small business owners that run stores and online businesses, they're pretty much done with their hard selling those week or two before Christmas. There are a lot of e-commerce businesses, right? So we're really hitting it hard leading up to Christmas and then we kind of just make sure things are running as they need to be during.
00:11:31
Speaker
those like two-ish weeks holiday season. So I'm still on, I'm still available if they need me, but like you, I communicate upfront with them about, you know, I won't be answering any emails or phone calls on these dates. If you need anything urgently, you know, please try to get it to me as quickly as possible or just know that it may take me a little bit to get back to you. And that's like, I think that's the number one piece of advice that I have is just,
00:11:59
Speaker
don't tell your clients what you're going to do, like have a conversation with them about what you're going to do. And you'll be surprised, you know, like most of them are going to be like, of course. It's like with anything I think we talked about, especially those of us, those of you that are listening that like come from that corporate background where you're kind of like, you have to ask off for the time. I mean, that's just, that's not the case anymore, but you have to like communicate it properly where it's respectful. Right. And I think too, like,
00:12:29
Speaker
I talk about this a lot, but I treat myself like a partner with my clients. I consider myself a partner with my clients, and I'm not their employee. I'm not just a service provider. I am a true partner with them. Their success is my success. I want them to do well, and part of them doing well is me also doing my job well, and making sure that I'm treating them with the respect that a true partner would. And so having those conversations, setting expectations.
00:12:59
Speaker
Like I said, they're having craziness too. Yeah. Yeah. And they want to take time off with their families as well. Yeah, exactly. My like past life and kind of like last year too, I was still was working a lot in the entertainment industry. And like we would be working with sometimes like I'd be working with like agents or like publicist or
00:13:25
Speaker
like record labels and stuff that they all take like two weeks completely off. And so like, you know, if you are in an industry where you know they take
00:13:35
Speaker
two weeks from December 22nd to January 4th. Think about when kids are out for Christmas. Some industries take off, they're shut down for two weeks at the holidays. If you know that, you need to understand that. You need to know your industry, and surely if you're working in that space, you do, but maybe they won't be working during that time, and you do need to have things prepared and ready to go out.
00:13:59
Speaker
And I think too, something I did forget to add is there is that childcare component that I always talk about with my clients where I'm like, Hey, you know, my kids don't have school those two weeks around Christmas. So it's going to be a little crazy on here. We probably shouldn't have our meeting that we have scheduled, you know, like I'll move things around. We like, this is like a time of chaos. I'll be around if you, you know, have an emergency, but let's try to get in front of this before we all have a little bit of chaos ensuing. Yeah.
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah, I usually try to like set like a like this will be the last thing I'll say and then we can move on but like I usually try to set like like a deadline for myself.
00:14:34
Speaker
to give to my clients. So it's like, okay, let's, let's have like our last touch base, like last meeting of the year, you know, like the week of December 15th or whatever this year, December 15th is on a Friday. So it's like, let's, you know, let's touch base before we all go our separate ways for the holidays. Let's make sure everything is touched. Like all the touch points are done. All the emails are scheduled. All of the, um,
00:14:58
Speaker
All of the ads are either stopped or going because in the ads world, it gets really expensive and especially in e-commerce world. You want to make sure that you understand, are you going to have anything running during those two weeks? Are you not? I just try to have one last year-end meeting with my clients before that week of Christmas hits.
00:15:21
Speaker
And that tends to work really well. I love that. That's a good idea to just set those expectations using the end of the year and the last of the year as a good benchmark. Yes, absolutely. Well, so that was business talk. And everyone kind of has their own way of doing things. But now we're going to jump into some fun stuff. The mental load of all of the things that pertain to the holidays. This is more on like a personal level.
00:15:50
Speaker
The chaos of Christmas and Thanksgiving, the holiday time in general, is so heavy. There's just so much going on. I don't know about you, but I really...
00:16:00
Speaker
feel like a chicken with my head cut off around the holidays. Yeah. Especially like as the kids get older and like they start understanding Christmas more and they start like, you know, you can enjoy it a little bit more through their eyes, but like you want to make it so special and so just
00:16:22
Speaker
you know, picture perfect in a way, even though like it's not going to be and there's going to be chaos. And I'll tell you right now, like I do a lot of this to myself because I'm such a procrastinator with gifts and with like same wrapping and all of those things. And I know that there could be things that I'm doing now to alleviate that or even like a month ago. Um, but I'm not quite there yet. I know same.
00:16:52
Speaker
I would say every single year I go through the same cycle in my head of next year, I'm going to do this differently and I never do it. I think at the end of the day, the problem is I'm a very conservative spender and I'm like, I don't want to spend this money right now.
00:17:08
Speaker
I'm like, Oh, there might be a deal. There might be something going on sale that I want to buy as a gift. Like, I don't know. And then I end up the week before Christmas buying a ton of Christmas gifts. And like, it's super chaotic, but everyone's getting an Amazon box for Christmas full of stuff. Yeah. So my house is, um, I have started implementing like a note in my phone and whenever anyone says something around me and I think of it, right? Like if my mom's like, Oh, I really need a new
00:17:33
Speaker
last year she had said she needed a new silicone bank baking sheet. So I wrote it down on my phone and then I got her one for Christmas and it made it super easy. So trying to write things down like that has been really helpful to keep track of
00:17:48
Speaker
actually giving people gifts that they want because I think that's a huge struggle. I don't want to give someone something that they don't want. Well, that's smart because it gets it out of your head. When you do sit down to start saying, okay, here's the people I need to get gifts for and here's some things, writing it down in that moment is really smart. That's a good tip. I'm going to take that on because
00:18:06
Speaker
Then that takes it out of your head, out of that mental space and it puts it down somewhere that you can refer back to. Because boy, I will find myself probably about now listing, okay, I have to buy gifts for all these people and I'll start writing out gift ideas and then I find myself the week I'm going to buy all the gifts, texting my sisters and being like, what do you think my niece wants and what do you think she wants? I'm like, I wrote this down. Do you think that makes sense?
00:18:34
Speaker
And I, it's like my, some of my family, like my nieces and my, and I have one nephew, like they range in ages from Ellie as Maggie is the youngest, my baby. And so they range in ages from like 18 months to 15 years old.
00:18:49
Speaker
So that's like a wide range of like different ages, you know, and like all the cousins by each other gifts and like then the aunts and uncles by the little ones gifts. And then we all get my mom something, you know, and then my sisters and I, like we've kind of like pared down what we do. And so, um, it's, it's evolved over time. And then as more like babies and kids get brought into the world and the space, like things just kind of have changed and shifted and evolved.
00:19:15
Speaker
I love that idea. I think that that's important. I think the things that have helped our Christmases be a little less chaotic over the past few years, especially since we started having kids, is paring down those gifts, but having conversations on a family-wide level of like,
00:19:30
Speaker
My husband's
Navigating Holiday Traditions with Family
00:19:31
Speaker
family is really big. He has six siblings and oh my gosh, I did not know that. Yeah. Three of them are step siblings, but like they're all, they're all siblings. They're all, you know, big family. Um, and so there's a lot of nieces and Asher is actually the only boy, but, um, there's a lot of kids and siblings and parents, you know, we've got my parents and then his two sets of parents, mom and stepdad, dad and stepmom.
00:19:56
Speaker
So there's a lot of gifts. And I think that the best thing that we did is have a conversation with all of the siblings like, okay, this is where we, we're not doing sibling gifts anymore. It's just gifts or like, you know, we're all going to go in on one gift for mom. Um, and that kind of thing to set expectations like well in advance. So everyone knows. And it also pares down the gifts. Cause I feel like at one point in time we were getting, I mean, 20 something gifts for just siblings and nieces and everything. And.
00:20:25
Speaker
I mean, we're just going to TJ Maxx buying pure crap because it's like, what are you supposed to get all of these people? Like, I don't know what anyone wants or everyone has what they need. Yeah. And so I was like, this is really silly. It's overwhelming. And it's just consumerism at its finest.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, we did the same thing. Now, most of the gifts that are given in our little family, like Christmas, again, my side of the family is mostly gifts for the little ones. And then we have small things like the brother-in-laws. They all exchange gifts. My sister and I, we all exchange gifts. And then we all get my mom something. So my mom, and then my mom gets all the kids something. So it's like, it has pared down a lot.
00:21:06
Speaker
And I can remember, and this is for the next topic, but I can remember the mountain of gifts for the Christmas Eve. We always do Christmas Eve with my mom and my dad and my mom's side of the family. And it was just so many gifts. But how we would do it was everyone just drew a name. And so all that. But that's going to get into the traditions talk.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, with Ryan's family, our girls are the only grandchildren, and his sister lives in a different state, and so we don't always spend Christmas together, but this year we happen to, so we're hosting at our house, and so I'm really excited to
00:21:49
Speaker
I hate to use the word to have the control over everything, but it'll be nice to have everyone come to our house. I love hosting and I love being ... Again, I'm going to use the word in charge, but having the control over the timeline and the flow of all that stuff.
00:22:12
Speaker
Um, it'll be, it'll be fun. It'll be the first year that we're like hosted like Christmas Eve and you know, like Christmas day ish lunch, kind of a thing at our house. Um, so that'll be fun. And then, um,
00:22:26
Speaker
One thing that has really helped too, like you said, having the conversations about the gift giving, but one thing that has helped too is as my kids have grown and as just life in general has kind of evolved and changed over the last few years, we had a conversation in early October with both sides of the family collectively. We're like, okay, what are the holidays going to look like this year? We set those expectations up front.
00:22:56
Speaker
Everyone, you know, we kind of all had to compromise and like make changes and like we won't be celebrating with my family on Christmas, even Christmas day this year, but it doesn't take away from the like, the beauty of it all. And it took me a little while to understand that because the change, like talk about like the mental stress of like,
00:23:18
Speaker
change and like trying to like make sure everybody's happy. But in reality, like you have to take care of like you and your little family and make sure that like, as long as you can celebrate at some point, like the date doesn't necessarily matter. And I think that's been the hardest thing for me. And honestly, moving was really helpful. But last year we did set the, like, before we even knew we were moving, we were like, Hey, we're not doing Christmas at anyone's house ever again.
00:23:44
Speaker
Like at this point in time, we have little kids and I want their memories of Christmas to be at our house. You mean like waking up Christmas morning, like Santa, all that, yeah. Santa at their own house and all of our relatives were far enough away where we weren't really going to do like a, we'll wake up in the morning at our own house and then like drive over their house. Yeah. And so I was just like, that was a really hard conversation for me to have with all of my
00:24:10
Speaker
like my in-laws, my own parents and just being like, Hey, like I love you guys. I would love for you guys to come to our house. Like that's open door policy at our house at all times. Like even for like Sunday dinners, open door policy here, but it's at our house. Like I want that. And cause I was thinking back on my Christmases as a kid and I would always remember like waking up and being so excited to go see what Santa brought and like sometimes they
00:24:35
Speaker
my stocking would be hidden and it'd be behind a car. Like, you know, like they were just like little things. And I don't remember the gifts that I got. I don't remember really anything. I just remember waking up at my house and like running to my Christmas tree and it was just the magic of it. And I'm like, I, I can't sacrifice giving my kids those memories to make some other family member happy. Like I need to folk right now.
00:25:01
Speaker
is my time to focus on my little family and that's just what we have to do.
00:25:05
Speaker
So it was a hard conversation, but I did have it. And now we are only doing Christmas at our house from now on. Yeah. Well, that's good. I think we talked about this a little bit in one of our productivity things, but it's like, you know, the hell yes versus the hell no. Like if you, if you say no to something and it makes it uncomfortable upfront, then you're kind of saving yourself the inevitable, like uncomfortableness every year of like kind of resenting what, you know, what you did just to make other people happy. And I think that's like,
00:25:35
Speaker
like without like getting like too personal about it. Like that's been a struggle for me because like we're the only ones that live away with my family, but we're like three hours away. So it's not that bad, but like we just don't, we don't want to drive on Christmas day anymore. And that's been kind of what we've done and it has worked, but now the girls, like my oldest, she's four, like she's, this is going to be like the first Christmas. I feel like she really understands.
00:26:01
Speaker
And like, it's just like, it's just going to be pure magic. And so our kind of conversation is like, you know, every other year. So like, you know, whether or not we like wake up at my mom's house is totally fine. Like we, my sisters like live literally like down the street from my mom's, but we just don't, we were always like waking up Christmas morning and then hurrying driving Christmas day back, you know, to be with my in-laws. And so now it's kind of
00:26:26
Speaker
hopefully going to be like every other year, which, which is sad because like we will, like my little family, we will miss out on like the, the tradition of like Christmas Eve that we've had since I was growing, like my whole life, like even my mom, like growing up, that was like what they did was with her side of the family. Christmas Eve has always been the same. And so like,
00:26:44
Speaker
That is a mental struggle that maybe people can relate with when they're listening to this of becoming a parent and becoming a mom and maybe living away from your family. Or maybe you do live around the corner from your family, but establishing your own boundaries around the holidays is a real mental fuck, if I'm going to be real honest. Seriously is a real mental fuck. And it's one of those things where
00:27:07
Speaker
I'm constantly, I don't want to let anyone down. Like I love my family and I love spending. Of course. I love the holidays with my family. We have so much fun. But I'm like, I just want my, like I want them all to come to me. Like they don't have little kids and that sounds super selfish. Like that's so fucking selfish, but it just is. I'm like, they don't have little kids and my brother doesn't even have little kids right now. And so him and his girlfriend are coming to visit us for the holidays, which is so nice because they live out in Colorado now.
00:27:37
Speaker
I feel, honestly, I feel worse for my mom because both of her kids have now moved to different states in the last year. And so it's this weird thing for her where she's probably really upset because she doesn't have anyone at home anymore to come over. And it's this weird, and this kind of goes into our next
00:27:54
Speaker
segue of like, we've always done exactly, you said the same exact thing every Christmas. And it's been so fun and beautiful and great traditions. And like, that's what my Christmas traditions are. But I'm like, now that, especially now that we've moved, I'm not getting on an airplane with these kids to go for Christmas, to bring all their gifts and then have them all. No, like, no, she just didn't know from me. We did, sorry to interrupt you, but like we did, like when we have the every other year thing or like we went skiing one year for Christmas, Santa, like
00:28:18
Speaker
came early to our house. Oh, that's nice. And the big stuff was here and then little stuff, he left Christmas morning wherever we were. Yeah. And I think at this point, because I'm like, oh, I want to create traditions with my own kids and things are going to look different because we're not going to have the New Year's Eve dinner that we've always had that's been beautiful at my mom's house on her China and having this amazing meal. Now we need to create our own traditions and I'm starting to realize that I don't have any outside of
00:28:48
Speaker
the things like I don't have any with my own kids and like me and my husband and our kids. It's all been with my parents or his parents, you know, like those family units.
00:28:59
Speaker
And now I need, now I feel the need to create them. If I tell you like, honestly, nothing has made me feel more guilty about not having my own family traditions with my little family than social media. And when I see like all these influencers and all these people are like, this is what we do for the holidays. And I'm just like, okay, cool. I guess I need to be making traditions. Right. But if you think about it, like our oldest are four.
00:29:21
Speaker
Like they're still little and like this is probably the first year that they're really going to grasp the concept of it. I mean, last year, maybe a little bit, but you know, like, well, I'll just tell you, like, so some things that like we've established that like.
00:29:36
Speaker
are going to continue. It's like Elf on the Shelf. I'm a Elf on the Shelf mom. We do that. It's not like, I don't go all out with it, but we do it. And the Elf comes the day after Thanksgiving or December 1st. I can't remember what we do. Warning, if kids are listening, we're not to get into some things. Child warning. Child warning here.
00:30:01
Speaker
But we do that. We did Elf on the Shelf last year, and it was fun. I was actually starkly against it. Me and my husband were really against it, but we were having ... My son was really difficult last year around Christmas. He just turned three and was in this terrible three zone. I was like, I think the elf will be good. Elf's watching.
00:30:20
Speaker
So we did do it last year and I'm going to keep it going. Cause I thought it was really fun, but at low, low bar, he doesn't move. Sometimes he's tired, you know? Um, and like word, a word of advice. Like you, I know you have two kids, like just get one elf. Oh yeah. No, we don't, we don't have multiple elves for each kid.
00:30:38
Speaker
I didn't even know that was a thing. I've had, I've seen some families where each kid has their own elf and I'm like, Oh, that's nice for you. But no, we have a family elf. Um, her name's Poe. Um, cause Ellie couldn't say North Pole. We said she came from the North Pole and
00:30:54
Speaker
She was like, Po, North Po, Po, Poteo. So I was like, OK. What else do we do? We have started a tiny little tradition. We did it last year by ourselves, but the year before last, our neighborhood goes pretty hardcore for Halloween and Christmas. And so with some friends, we just load up the kids in strollers and wagons. And just one evening, just walked around and looked at Christmas lights. And so we've kind of tried to do that just with our little family. But that's really the extent of it. I haven't.
00:31:24
Speaker
tried to think too hard about it other than wanting my girls to wake up Christmas morning and like having that running down the stairs, Santa has come moment. And, you know, I want, I know that like, well for our situation, we won't have that every year, but the years that we are going to be at our house, like, yeah, that like makes me want to cry. I've been just thinking about how special that'll be. I just think it's so special. Like I love that. Yeah. We don't really have any traditions. We were big walkers in general, so we walk all the time.
00:31:53
Speaker
And love walking around and looking up the Christmas lights and all of the decorations. It'll be so fun in your new neighborhood to see. I know. I've heard our new neighborhood is really fun around Christmas. So I'm excited about that. But I'm like, I don't know. I just need to think of some things. I think you're right. There is this weird expectations that influencers tend to put on us. And I do need to kind of let go of that and be like, OK, I am fun. Our kids are having a great experience no matter what, whether there's
00:32:24
Speaker
crazy traditions or not. Yeah. I have a question for you. The biggest question that comes up when we joined families, when Ryan and I got married was, does Santa leave gifts out ready to play with or does he wrap them at your house? We're a wrap family. Oh my God.
00:32:44
Speaker
What are you? We are. They are ready to play with out and like ready like you run up and you just grab them. And Brian is like his family was like you were Santa wraps the gifts, which I can see why that special like the anticipation of like opening the gifts from Santa. But Santa always left him like open, ready to go. And so that's been like a point of I wouldn't say contention. But last year it was like
00:33:10
Speaker
What are you know say no santa wraps gifts and i'm like no santa leaves them out in the open what are you talking about and so we've compromised and like some things are wrapped and some things are like stocking stuff.
00:33:22
Speaker
is wrapped sometimes and like, you know, I was like trying to figure out what to wrap or Santa was trying to figure out what to wrap and like what not to. And so, um, anyway, it'll be interesting. I have this vivid memory and like, just, this isn't necessarily about that, but of wrapping. Um, my brother has all love him.
00:33:47
Speaker
If he's listening, um, love him. He, but he, I have these vivid memories of him. All he, the way he unwraps, his gifts is so funny. Like he's so particular about it. Like I'm like, let's just go, you know? And he like, it takes so long. He would always be the last one. Like he would always have like 12 gifts. That's like some absurd amount of gifts because I'd be done. Cause I just ripped them all open and he would be like taking all the tape and perfectly, you know, Oh my gosh. And I'm just like, how are you? And then I'd be kind of jealous. Like I wish I went a little slower.
00:34:18
Speaker
Is there anything that y'all did as a family that you could continue with your kids? I think about it on Ryan's side, his parents, I don't know who started this or if they started it when they were little, but what they do before they open a gift is they say, what are you going to do with it before they open the gift?
00:34:34
Speaker
Oh, no. And so you kind of like guess, like you kind of like shake it and like guess. Oh, that's fun. So like when we started dating and like we started doing holidays together, I remember like that first time I was like, you know, you're used to what you do. And so I was like, what we do in my family is we go by age. So like the youngest opens first and then we like rotate through. Like youngest to oldest opens one gift at a time.
00:34:55
Speaker
And it makes it last, right? And with like my husband's family, it's kind of just like whoever wants to open opens, but you open one at a time. But before you open, you say what are you going to do with it? And it has been like a really fun thing that I think that we'll continue with our girls for gifts that they're going to open. And that is cute.
00:35:13
Speaker
you know, like I remember one time, like I had something and I like shook it and it sounded like I had liquid in it. I was like, Oh, I'm gonna wear it. Like it's, you know, thinking it was perfume and I opened it and it was like a beautiful like bottle of olive oil or something. And I was like, Oh, I'm definitely not gonna wear this. I love that. It's so fun. It's like a fun little tradition that I think will continue.
00:35:32
Speaker
Um, a tradition that some of my best friends do. So my best friends are, they live like across the street from my parents growing up. They are, our parents are all best friends. So we're kind of like one big family for all the holidays, which is also really sad that we're not going to really have that at least this year. Um, or Christmas is in general. Um, but.
00:35:49
Speaker
They always do this pickle on the tree. Have you heard about this? I haven't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so fun. They do like a pickle ornament. They hide, like Santa hides it on the tree on Christmas, you know, night. And then whoever finds the pickle first thing in the morning gets like a special gift. And I think when you're like a DVD or, you know, like just like something small and fun. But I'm like, that is such a fun little, I don't know, activity.
00:36:13
Speaker
I love that. That is so fun. Yeah. I mean, there's just so many things that you can establish with your own little family and things that probably won't even seem like a tradition until you witness it for the first time. And you're like, oh, that was so sweet. Let's do that again next year. And then it'll just kind of continue to be a tradition. I mean, as we wrap this up,
00:36:34
Speaker
I would love to, when you listen to this, I'll have a post on the business play date and it's going to all be around holiday traditions. So I would love if all of our listeners could go to that post and comment one or two of their family traditions, even if you think it's not like this big monumental thing, like
00:36:54
Speaker
Maybe it's you make cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I would just love to hear all of our listeners' little traditions that they do. I would too. That would be so fun. We'll screenshot some and share them in the stories and stuff too. That would be really fun. Yeah, we'll share them. That would be really fun.
00:37:12
Speaker
Tis the season and just give yourself a lot of grace when it comes to the holidays, when it comes to work, prepare as best as you can. The mental load is the mom and the wife and the one that takes on a lot of the responsibilities during the holiday season. Just give yourself grace and enjoy it because I hate this, but it's so true. They're only little for so long before they become cynical about it all. Right?
00:37:41
Speaker
And I'm like, even if you have like older ones and littler ones, like at some point the older ones are going to be cynical and like, it's just, you know, I know, I know, but well, so fine. Well, we, um, we'll catch you guys next time and make sure you also, if you loved this, please leave a review. Yes. We will be back next week with some more fun. Talk soon.
00:38:11
Speaker
Bye!