Thoughts on Our {Connected Christmas}

As the New Year has arrived and the Christmas season has come to a close, we reflect on our intentions as we set out for our {Connected Christmas} and compile the wisdom of the amazing Mama’s who shared with us their holiday JOY, struggle and tips and tricks to manage a season that is often met with lots of Mama stress.

Throughout our series our mama’s offered some amazing Wisdom like:

Mama Allana’ Gift giving guide:

And Mama Quinn’s amazing Idea about leading her sweet {I} to learn about kindness and doing random acts of kindness on her birthday!

And Mama Denise’s wisdom, from a different season of parenting:
“When people say enjoy them when they are little, ….its true, but you will make new traditions along the way. Let them stay up late, eat the chocolate and have YOUR egg nog…just enjoy it. And hopefully you get some downtime..that is necessary for all I think. Do less with what you have, and just enjoy.”

Sigh, sharing our stories is soo powerful. In our own, and our mama interviews we saw themes of the stress of measuring up and trying to let little
things go. We saw the JOY of tradtions and that the most meanginful gifts given and recived really seemed to be simple and often hand made. We learned about new tradtions, like Mama Allana’s ice cream pancakres on the last day of school and Mama Mel’s advent house. All in all ,it was amazing to connect with all of these Mama’s and we are deeply greatful for their sharing.As we reflect on our own {Connected Christmas} journey we have a few thoughts to share.

Mel- Reflecting on my holidays this year, my theme was ‘go with it’. My holidays were a bit of a lesson in the things you can’t control (like being on vacation when your kid gets the stomach flu). I am trying really hard to go into situations with flexible expectations. I say flexible expectations because I always have this vision in my head of how I want things to go, and when they don’t turn out just that way there is inevitable disappointment. I don’t want to totally let go of my expectations, because sometimes they add value. Like, ‘I want to go to that party because I expect I’ll have some fun…’ But I’m trying to be more go-with-the-flowy so that rather than being disappointed sometimes by how things turn out, I’m more like ‘well, that was different than I thought’. I’m making progress with this! I also tried really hard not to overplan our holidays this year and that was sooo good! I think Missy’s rubbing off on me a little 🙂 Overall, once the holidays arrived, we had a pretty awesome balance of family time, friend time, and downtime. We’re ready for all that 2018 will bring!

Missy- If I were to pick a word to describe my holidays it would be SLOW ( don’t hate me ☺) – normally the answer I hear from folks is BUSY. I get it – this event and that event. We did have some events yes, but we did say no to some too. Our Connected Christmas goal was just that- to be and connect. We headed to the cottage and endured the deep freeze with some Christmas magic. My heart was so full!. Wild {B} was just the cutest little guy on Christmas morning and seeing his wonder is something I want to hold onto forever. The highlights included seeing family, cousin time, an impromptu kids concert on Christmas day and just being. Nothing we HAD to do…. it sounds like a dream, and really I have to say it was- but it took damn hard work in shifting my thinking , expectations and desires to get here- I shared how Christmas is a triggering time for me in my mama interview and I have to say, this year was the healing I needed to come back to loving Christmas – in a simplish way – I still had my winter wonderland mini lights and garlands all over that cabin!
We hope that you have enjoyed reading our series JOYCREW! Thank you again to our amazing mamas!
If you are looking to find more JOY through the simplicity we speak of, be sure to join our mailing list to be the first to hear about any upcoming workshops this year!

BIG LOVE and Cheers to 2018

XO Missy + Mel