First year I am not financially stressed about xmas

Normally, christmas sends me into a state of stress and grinchiness. This is in large part due to the fact that I normally never plan for the holiday, and then I'm a week or so away from it and I realize I have to scramble to get all this money together to buy all these presents, which in the past has meant not paying some bills and planning on double paying in January. And part of my grinchiness is due to my mother and how she always seems to expect so much at christmas time, and she's very hard to buy for.

But this, I think Christmas is going to be virtually stress-free, at least financially, and I already know what I'm getting people for presents, mostly. We actually set aside money this year for christmas, putting any extra money aside weekly. We have more than enough to cover presents, Myra's boarding while we are gone, and our car rental, and we won't have to scramble or mess up our budget.

And my mom has been better about presents lately, I think she's understanding that presents aren't the most important thing anymore, and I think she finally gets the fact that for us, it's a lot of money just to come back for a week, so we don't have the money to throw away on presents like we used to.

All of this will make the next few weeks much easier. And then since we are going back east early this year, when we get back to Portland, we can just be mellow and enjoy the festivities out here. I might actually look forward to Christmas this year.