“Only 8 Weekends Left! My Festive To-Do List and a Throwback to 1984”

This morning, while updating my calendar and countdown app (yes, I have one—and I love it!), I realized we only have 8 weekends left until Christmas! Yikes! I still have a huge list of things I want to get done before the end of 2025. I feel like the holiday season has hardly started, and now it’s already flying by.

We didn’t put out as many Halloween decorations this year, but as a family, we baked and decorated some festive sugar cookies. Then, Iyan and his best buddy carved pumpkins. Iyan wants to hang out with friends on Halloween, but so far, they haven’t gotten organized. I’m making a few backup plans just in case—they might include a “free” haunted house I found.

Ray and I actually met at a haunted house on Halloween night in 1984, so I always try to do something fun to celebrate. If Iyan ends up going out with friends, we might just head to one ourselves. It’s too bad they don’t still have the one where we met—it would’ve been the perfect throwback date night. I don’t have a picture of us from that night, but here’s our prom photo from a few months later. Looking at it now, with today’s styles, it almost does look like we were in costume.

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📝 My End-of-Year To-Do & Fun List

🎉 Fun Activities

• Turkey dinner with all the sides!
• Hiking and biking in the cooler weather. Iyan still needs to complete a 22-mile ride for his Biking Merit Badge!
• Decorate gingerbread boys, girls, or houses. We had so much fun doing the Halloween cookies, and since I have so many sprinkles, we might as well use them up. Maybe we’ll even turn it into a friendly competition.
• Christmas card party. A women’s group I’m in is hosting a “Mimosas & Christmas Cards” afternoon in November. You just bring your cards, stamps, and address book—how fun is that? I used to love sending cards, and this might be the nudge I need to bring back the tradition.
• GMA Pop Orchestra Christmas performance (December 7). This one is just me and Iyan. Somehow, Ray managed to find a race to go compete in!
• Santa Run (yes, dressed as Santa!). We’ve done it several times and always have a great time.
• Pick our Christmas Day movie. This tradition goes back at least 20 years. After all the festivities, we go to the movies with another couple we’ve known since high school.
• Make a Christmas shopping list. I’ve trimmed it down significantly over the years, so I’m hoping the actual shopping won’t be overwhelming.
• Ebeneezer Scrooge tickets – This tradition dates back to when our daughter was in elementary school. We always go watch Scrooge at Pocket Sandwich Theater.
• Blue October concert – Thanks Tabby!
• Wicked For Good. Girls’ weekend in OKC. Complete with costumes. I cannot wait!

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✈️ Travel & Adventures

• Plan our excursions and activities for our trip to Hawaii in January.
• Recover from the guilt I’ll feel if Iyan’s award ceremony for WINNING his class in TCCRA happens while we’re gone. (He’ll be home for the Hawaii trip—it’s adults-only! Yippee!)
• Plan our trip to the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park. This is part of our Christmas gift to Iyan even though we aren’t going until May. We are going to include dinner at Hell’s Kitchen the last night of the trip.

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🏡 Home & Organization

• Purge, purge, purge! Go through closets and our storage trailer.
• Fix up the big camper and do some camping. Ray needs to replace the flooring—it had a leak that Alyssa didn’t tell us about, so now it needs repairs.
• Sell the big camper and the little one to buy a mid-size toy hauler. The big one’s too large for many sites, and the little one’s seen better days. This might be a stretch goal, but I think we’d use a smaller toy hauler more—if I can convince myself to give up a private master bedroom!
• Rescue my summer patio plants before the first freeze. (Ray, this could be our sign to build a cute little greenhouse!)

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It feels like there’s so much to do and so little time, but writing it all down makes it seem doable. Maybe the trick isn’t to finish everything, but to enjoy each thing along the way.

What’s on your “before the end of the year” list?

With love & glitter,
Valerie