I haven’t put our Christmas lights up yet, despite numerous sparkling decorations sprouting up around the neighborhood.

And despite having an awesome Christmas vacation over at Disney World coming up in a little over a week, there’s an ever-growing to-do list looming between me and vacation that’s making it really hard to look forward to that.

So I needed a little Christmas tonight!

The outdoor mall near our house has this great Symphony in Lights show every night where their Christmas tree display in the courtyard dances to a variety of Christmas songs, and apparently Sara needed some shampoo or something from Bath & Body Works, so we packed up the clan and headed over for jam-packed sidewalks and a line out the front door to checkout at B&BW … but luckily I didn’t need shampoo, so instead I took two of the kids and we went to watch the pretty lights while Sara fought her way through the crowds in the name of girly-smelling hair.

And the show was nice. Nothing even close to on par with the now defunct Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights that Disney hosted up until this year, but they had a nice variety of music from the required Trans Siberian Orchestra to some kids songs, and even a Jimmy Buffet number because hey, there were decorated palm trees lining the streets, of course!

Christopher didn’t do so hot during the show – I think just because of the loud music – and so he clung to me for most of it, peeking out reluctantly to watch the changing colors from time to time, but once it was over and the music stopped, we sat around just killing time waiting for Sara’s shampoo line that wouldn’t end and it was then that we had some fun calling out the different colors as the lights changed because colors are one of the things he’s working on right now.

Then we went and had a nice, leisurely meal of steak fajitas at the Mexican place that was playing Christmas songs entirely in Spanish all night long, so that was interesting. Not once did I even hear Feliz Navidad, either!

Anyways, we probably could’ve spent the night a bit more productively – Sara did ultimately get her shampoos, though – but it was nice to get out of the house even just for a couple of hours to take in the holiday spirit that I keep hearing so much about, if only my stressors would take a cue and we could just mutually agree to table things until next year.

As it is, the weekend isn’t even over yet and I’ve already got a feeling that next week is gonna go by uber quick, so at this point my goal is really to just accomplish a few key things along the way and enjoy some caroling along the way.

Christmastime only comes once a year to waste it all being stressed out the whole time! 😕