November

My monthly calendar - so serene before I start filling in all the craziness!

It's the first Monday on the month, Espen is at school and Gwen is napping, and so I am having a little pow-wow with myself to plan out some of the craziness that is the last two months of the year, and get an idea of what needs to happen and when.

When Espen started playing soccer and Nick got involved in scouting earlier this fall, I got into the habit of printing out a monthly calendar page (I make my own, but you can find heaps of them for free on Pinterest). I then add all of the stuff we have going on in a month, from Nick's weekly scouting meeting to when the library books have to be returned. Until it became a habit, I wrote on the calendar that every Monday was Show and Tell at Espen's preschool. Every appointment, every event goes on the calendar and frees up another little piece of my brain from the task of remembering that. Such a simple thing, such a complete lifesaver for a spaz like me. I could do all of this on my phone, I suppose, but there is just something about actually seeing that piece of paper ingloriously taped to the side of the fridge that reminds me to take a quick look and keep me on track.

Besides putting the calendar together, here are some of the other things that I'm trying to plan for this month:

• Gwen's birthday on the 15th. Holy äioli, my baby is turning two! I think we've mostly decided on what we're giving her (clothes, books, a stroller for her babies and maybe a bed too, if I can find a cute one), but we need to do the actual shopping too. Instead of a party, we're planning to take our animal enthusiast to the zoo so we can watch her shriek with delight at all the animals. Well, I say instead of a party... there will undoubtedly be cake and decorations and the tiniest of shindigs with some family, but not a party-party like we usually do. She's more of an adventurer anyway. But still, I need to figure out the logistics of all of this, and put together a little invite for the nearest and dearest. And go to Costco without Gwen so I can buy that stroller. 
• Christmas cards! I like to get our cards out as soon after Thanksgiving as possible, so we have got to get moving on these as soon as possible. Especially seeing as we decided to take photos for our card ourselves. We've got a little something fun up our sleeves that I am very excited about! We just need to buy a few props, get our wardrobe figured out and then take the photos. ... And then design and print and address and send the cards. And buy holiday stamps. Nothing to it!
• Thanksgiving Dinner. We are hosting again this year, which I am delighted about. Not only do I love the planning and putting together an event like that, I also love not having to load up the kids and drive through snowy mountain passes for four hours each way. It will be fairly low-key with only eight of us for dinner, but there's still a lot of planning and shopping and prepping to do. Not to mention time spent on Pinterest in search of the perfect place card and deciding whether or not I want to fold my napkins into turkeys. 
• Christmas presents for my family in Norway. My mum's birthday is in mid-December, and so I want try to get their Christmas package there in good time for both her birthday and Christmas. Bur first I just have to work out what I want to get her for Christmas and her birthday, and find a present for my brother and get it all packed up and on its way. 
• Advent Calendar. They're a very traditional thing in Scandinavia, and something I've enjoyed continuing with my family (See our advent calendar here and here.) December first does have a habit of creeping up on me, though, so I want to try to get those 24 little packages all ready to go in good time this year. And I'm trying to make our advent and Christmas this year a bit more about faith and family and service and compassion, and a little bit less about presents and consumerism, so I'm mulling over ways to do that with our calendar. Tricky! 
• Christmas cleaning. I've written about this before, and it is totally a Norwegian thing, this irrational desire to clean everything in sight before Christmas is here. Except this year I kind of want to do it before Thanksgiving, or at least get well on the way by then. So I am devising a battle plan to deep clean every room in our house over the next month or so. Would it make me an absolute lunatic if I created a chart? (I really want to make a chart...)

Oh, and I signed up for NaBloPoMo this year, so I'll also be attempting to crank out a blog post every day for the month of November. 

How is your month looking?