Hee hee!! I am loving this CBC with my friend Arika because I am getting to learn so much more about her. And YES She was right in guessing what My weakness was. She is a smart lady.

Well my last question to Arika was a good and nosy one asking “How Has Your Pregnancy Been So Far”? Her answer was so good, detailed and parts of it cause me to get bit by the “baby bug” This is a must read so please run over the link above and check out her answer.

So here is the question that Arika asked me:

“What are some of the things you do to keep things stress free at Christmas time around your house?”

Wow what a loaded question. 1st let me start off by saying that it sounds like Arika has a winner of a hubby!! WOW he really does a lot this time of year!!

Well, Christmas Day is also my Birthday and at our family we Celebrate Christmas AND Kwanzaa on top of that, my sons birthday is 2 days after Christmas and will be turning 8. As you can imagine the Williams’ household is jumping from Dec 20th - January 2nd

I love living as stress free as possible and here are some of the things that I do around the holiday time to stress at bay.

1. Shopping - I create my shopping list in early November and start shopping early for everyone on my holiday list as well as for Isaac’s birthday. Usually I do 90% of my shopping online to beat the hustle and bustle of the mall. This year I finished all of my shopping about 8 days before Christmas! It is now 2 days before and all the gifts are wrapped and stashed in my hiding spot
2. Decorating - Let the kids to it! (smile) Lance and I set up the tree, Kwanzaa decorations and lights that then let the children have at it. They do most of the crafts, ornaments, pictures and cards decorating as we dance to some soulful holiday music and video tape the entire ordeal. We have tapes that go back to 1998
3. HELP ME!! <– One of my favorite tools. Since it is my birthday week there is a rule that I don’t cook on Christmas. Thankfully Hubby is a wonderful cook and thoughtful so he prepares a huge breakfast buffet and a nice dinner for us each Christmas so that I can actually Relax on my birthday. My older girls are great with helping to assemble toys, clean up the mounds of boxes and the cleaning.
4. Time Out - I make sure that no matter what is going on, that I still make time for my 30 minutes of me time that I take for meditation and/or journaling.
5. Stop/Slow Down Working - Usually I spent 2+hrs or much more daily working on my WAH Businesses. Well during the week between Christmas and New Years I cut Way back. I do this so that I don’t have the stress of work, family and me time all at me at once. I really play work by ear and take a much needed break.
6. Be good To Me - I usually treat myself to something nice. Last night it was attending a really fun Holiday Ball with my best friend, where we ate, danced and had a great time.
7. Sleep <–my other best friend I am the type of gal that doesn’t function well on less than 8hrs of sleep to I make sure that I get sleep during the night and a nap during the day.

So, I think that’s about it. Arika knows that when I start talking about how to reduce stress that I can write a book so I will stop it right here.

So my next question for Arika is

“I cant help but to notice how awesome your blog is and how you keep posting exciting posts daily. What are your future plans for that awesome blog of yours?”