1. Give yourself and your husband the gift of deciding.<\/strong>\u00a0Instead of just letting things happen this year, work with your husband to decide what the holidays should look like for your family.<\/p>\n Figure out what you really want.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0What does an ideal Christmas look like to you? What does it look like to your husband? Talk about it openly and honestly, and listen to what he has to say.<\/p>\n Establish your priorities.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Make a list of the two or three things that are most important to each of you and use that list as the basis for planning the busy holiday weeks.<\/p>\n Let go of things that don\u2019t fit your priorities.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>This is where things start to get difficult. You\u2019ll have to let some things go because you can\u2019t do everything (warning: some people won\u2019t like that). <\/em>This year, focus on the things that will make the season fun, relaxing and memorable.<\/p>\n Plan the activities you really want to do.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Choose one or two activities that each family member loves and schedule them now. Put them on your calendar, because that’s the only way to make sure they happen.<\/p>\n 2. Give your children the gift of a mother who can relax and enjoy the season.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Your children don’t care if everything is perfect; they want the time and attention of a mother who is relaxed and happy.<\/p>\n For example, when our children were very young, I stepped back from the Christmas dinner preparations (even though they were taking place in my kitchen) and let my mom and sisters who didn’t have children do the bulk of the work.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n I felt guilty, but I also thought that enjoying our children on Christmas day was more important than spending the entire day in the kitchen. <\/em><\/p>\n 3. Give your husband the gift of your time and presence<\/strong>. Make plans a couple of times a week to enjoy spending time together.<\/p>\n Do some of the Christmas errands together and turn them into a date, like doing some shopping for the kids and then going out for coffee or dessert.\u00a0Or do something fun or relaxing that has nothing to do with the season (sometimes you just need a break from it!).<\/p>\n If you can’t get out of the house, put the kids to bed and watch a Christmas movie or another favorite movie. Make time for sex regularly,\u00a0remembering that\u00a0sex is about you too, not just your husband, and that it can be exactly the stress reducer you need!<\/p>\n 4. Give yourself the gift of “enough.”<\/strong> At some point in the season (long before December 24!) decide that you have done enough, bought enough, planned enough and prepared enough.<\/p>\n 5. Give your family the gift of outdoor activity<\/strong>.\u00a0Go outside almost every day as a family and walk, bike, hike, skate, sled, play soccer \u2013 whatever makes sense in your part of the country.<\/p>\n 6. Give yourself the gift of relaxation<\/strong>.\u00a0Take time regularly to do something that really relaxes you<\/strong> such as take a long bath, read a book, take a walk, drink a glass of wine, watch a Christmas movie, or meet a friend for a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n The Christmas season will always be a hectic and bustling time of year. (And that\u2019s part of what makes it fun.) But it doesn\u2019t have to be overly stressful, and it certainly doesn\u2019t have to be chaotic. This year, to make sure you get plenty of the bustling and little or none of the chaos, decide to give yourself these 6 gifts that will mean more than any gift you can buy in a store.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Christmas season is almost upon us, and if you\u2019re like most moms you\u2019re both anticipating it with joy and approaching it with a bit of dread. After all, the weeks from Thanksgiving Day (in the U.S.) through Christmas and New Year\u2019s Day tend to be some of the busiest and most stressful weeks of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":404,"featured_media":9409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[2401,301,24,1065,26,2096,61,56,2442,818,233,684],"class_list":["post-9402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-bed-time","tag-children","tag-christmas","tag-enough","tag-family","tag-gift","tag-joy","tag-motherhood","tag-new-years","tag-season","tag-thanksgiving","tag-time"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Gaye Groover Christmus is the creator of CalmHealthySexy<\/a>, a website that helps women create more energy and passion in their life, health and marriage. She\u2019s also the author of ebooks and resources for busy wives and moms who want to live healthier lives and create happier marriages<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"