Christmas Card Drama

One thing I’ve prided myself on, over the years – has been the precision timing of my Christmas card mailings. Friends and family know that the card from our house is usually one of the first to start off the holiday.

But this year, my Christmas card magic has failed me. It isn’t that we aren’t prepared. We bought our cards last year on clearance. The fresh boxes of greeting cards are sitting at the ready, as are sheets of holiday stickers, pre-printed address labels, and a stack of newly written and printed Christmas letters.

The cards sit there and mock me…untouched, unsigned, and unsent.

On Sunday I decided we needed a photo of Little Guy to pop in with the letter. So all day, we tried to take some holiday themed pictures. We posed him in front of the Christmas tree, with his Nativity Scene, and in a red and white Santa hat.

What were our end results? Well, he’s two. So, the photos we did get were: “Blur of Boy”, “Back of Boy –as he runs away”, “Boy adding Thomas the Train to his Nativity set”, and “Boy yanking off his Santa hat with Distaste”. There were several cute pictures, but none that were just right. I was running out of time though, so I settled on one that will work. I went on-line Sunday night and placed the order to be picked up Monday.

Monday night Hubby, Little Guy and I were out running errands. I took our tiny fellow into one store, and Hubby went to get the pictures at another. When we met up a bit later, he told me that there were no pictures for us. Clearly they had made some mistake and I should give them a good talking to when I picked up the pictures eventually.

I appreciated his defense of me, but in my mind…. I began to have a little suspicion that I’d probably messed up the order myself. When we got home, I went to the website, and sure enough I hadn’t hit the final “confirm transaction” button.

Argh!

I apologized to Hubby (who being the sweet spouse that he is, took it in stride), and then completed the order. Today I went to the store again (over my lunch hour) and have to admit I wasn’t terribly surprised when they said the machines had broken down and all orders were delayed by at least a day.

So tomorrow I should have the pictures. I stress the word “should”. We’ll see.

Tonight I will get off this computer (in just a minute, I promise) and become a signing, folding, and stamping machine. If I need inspiration, I’ll listen to Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra singing Christmas carols. The current version of our list has 87 names on it, so I might even need to break out some Nat King Cole and Deam Martin albums.  Can't beat the old stuff in my book...

But I digress.  I’ll leave the cards unsealed so that the pictures can be inserted right before we mail them out.

With any luck, I’ll have the stack mailed by the end of the week. If luck fails me, maybe I’ll have them out by Valentine’s Day.