{"id":681,"date":"2011-11-22T02:37:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T02:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/11\/getting-in-the-holiday-spirit.html"},"modified":"2011-11-22T02:37:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T02:37:00","slug":"getting-in-the-holiday-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/11\/getting-in-the-holiday-spirit.html","title":{"rendered":"Getting in the Holiday Spirit…"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been hard this year.  The media has been inundating us with holiday-related retail commercials and the radio stations are already playing Christmas music.  I guess it started the same week as Halloween, which seemed pretty crazy to me.  Has it always been this early?<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong…my family and I LOVE Christmas, we have a wonderful time discussing the story of Jesus’ birth, and celebrating the many holiday traditions we have.<\/p>\n

However, we Vollmers have a strict policy: no holiday decorations until Thanksgiving Day.  No big holiday shopping till after Thanksgiving.  Really, all we do on Thanksgiving Day itself is drag the dozen-or-so plastic Rubbermaid bins from the shed, and we use the rest of the weekend to break out everything and get it displayed: tree(s), lights, etc.<\/p>\n

Later this week I will start planning my cookie baking, gift shopping and Christmas card designs. <\/p>\n

But today we couldn’t help ourselves.  I picked up two Wilton Pre-Baked Gingerbread House Kits<\/a> from A.C. Moore after the holidays last year (2 for $5? I think) and we broke out one of them this afternoon.  Timmy chose the design on the box to copy and we went to work.  I remained in charge of the icing (could you imagine Timmy with the icing????) and Timmy placed the candies.<\/p>\n

Jacob was our photographer today.  Enjoy!<\/p>\n

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It’s been hard this year.  The media has been inundating us with holiday-related retail commercials and the radio stations are already playing Christmas music.  I guess it started the same week as Halloween, which seemed pretty crazy to me.  Has it always been this early? Don’t get me wrong…my family and I LOVE Christmas, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[],"tags":[184,42,8,54],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-aZ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":403,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/11\/sweet-potatoes-where-have-you-been-all-my-life.html","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":0},"title":"Sweet Potatoes, Where Have You Been All My Life???","date":"21 November 09","format":false,"excerpt":"With Thanksgiving on our horizons -- despite the retail industry jumping straight into Christmas shopping -- I thought I'd share a Thanksgiving anecdote with you.Like many other things in my culinary world, it's Alton Brown's fault. For those who don't know, or hadn't noticed from many of the other recipes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cooking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2770,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2013\/12\/holiday-cookie-roundup.html","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":1},"title":"Major Mom’s Favorite Holiday Cookie Roundup","date":"04 December 13","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm a one-trick pony: I make the same cookies every year. I've written pretty elaborate posts about them in 2008 and 2011, so this year I just want to round them up for you. Today is the day I plan to address all of my Christmas cards once and for\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"No matter what cookies we make, there's always some for Santa! What cookies are you making this year?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/IMG_0501-1024x768.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":696,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/12\/the-annual-holiday-open-house-cute-party-idea-and-recipes-to-share.html","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":2},"title":"The Annual Holiday Open House…Cute Party Idea and Recipes to Share","date":"23 December 11","format":false,"excerpt":"Why invest in those complicated key-ring-like wine charms when you might have a house full of THESE?I'd heard about it from one of the GeekMoms. \u00a0I can't remember whether it was on GeekMom itself, or one of the GeekMoms referencing another website with this idea.I went through my kids' THOUSANDS\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"christmas\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ldRgV7gnPgA\/TvS4X1eMHqI\/AAAAAAABcTI\/WwUvz71ediQ\/s640\/IMG_6358.JPG?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2844,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2013\/12\/colorado-discoveries-23-denver-chriskindl-market.html","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":3},"title":"Colorado Discoveries 23: Denver Chriskindl Market","date":"22 December 13","format":false,"excerpt":"I feel sort of guilty posting about this event when today is the last day for the season. However, hopefully folks will Google this event in future years and can read about our family's experience. The Denver Christkindl Market is an annual holiday tradition in downtown Denver, put on by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"colorado\"","img":{"alt_text":"The Denver Christkindl Market is an annual tradition.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/DSC_0003-1024x678.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1634,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2012\/12\/happy-holidays-from-major-mom.html","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":4},"title":"Happy Holidays from Major Mom!","date":"31 December 12","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, okay, so I'm a bit behind here. \"But at least you're kept your head above water with all the holiday obligations, right? You seemed to have had a billion Christmas parties for Dave's unit, scouts, the spouses' club, and the boys' piano lessons.\" I guess so -- the house\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"christmas\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/DSC_1728-e1356992860794.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":682,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/11\/sweet-potatoes-veggie-or-not-veggie-take-my-poll.html","url_meta":{"origin":681,"position":5},"title":"Sweet Potatoes — Veggie or Not Veggie? Take My Poll!","date":"23 November 11","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently fell in love with sweet potatoes. \u00a0I wrote about it in 2009.Incidentally, Dave had a similar epiphany in 1997 with onions. \u00a0He went from hating them to loving them. \u00a0I tolerate them, but certainly don't love them. \u00a0He doesn't love sweet potatoes, so I guess we're even.Anyway, since\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cooking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}