26 shopping days 'till Christmas

Well, Thanksgiving is over, the turkey carcass is resting comfortably in the trash (we got a little one this year--so not too many leftovers) and we brought the Christmas decorations up from the basement including the four pieces that make up the Christmas tree. Yea, I know, I used to be a purist too--only real trees; the smell, the atmosphere, yada, yada; but we decided to go green a couple of years ago. Ok, that and we didn't want to put up with the pine needles, watering, disposal--takes all the fun out of Christmas.
Although we didn't brave the elements for Black Friday (I am NOT a Morning Person), we managed to do some online shopping for Christmas gifts and by Saturday when we did go out, there were still plenty of good sales (so there).
We got Nick and Katie to do their Letters for Santa, although Nick, who is almost 10, titled his letter To Mom and Dad pretending to be Santa. I had to have a little talk with him to make sure he didn't let Katie hear him talk like that. At 4 (almost 5) she'll still want to do leave Cookies for Santa and we can still, hopefully, use the prospect of coal for bad behavior.
All in all, I think we're doing better than last year when we finally managed to get the tree up a week before Christmas. Who knows, maybe we'll even do Christmas Cards this year.