When the Holidays Get Messy: Chaos, Kids & Christmas Expectations

Hi, I'm Matthew Greger, and I'm Nancy Greger.

We have this podcast called We Should Probably Edit This, but we won't.

Our podcast is about us, our relationship, our 37 years of being married, raising 3 children, And hopefully we can share something that would be inspiring, honest, truthful, as our tagline says, unfiltered, unscripted, and unapologetically us. There you go.

We should probably edit this, but we won't.

Hi. Hello. How are you?

All right. This is our second attempt at this today. We had technical difficulties to get started. Although we won't edit this, even though we probably should, it just wasn't working.

There was nothing to edit.

I know, because it just gave us a warning message.

It gave you the little round bubble that kept spinning and spinning and spinning. It wasn't going anywhere.

All right, so we just had Thanksgiving. There was a lot to be thankful for.

We did it. There is a lot to be thankful for. Yes. And now we're off to the races for Christmas.

That's right. It was a little bit of a chaotic Thanksgiving towards the end. Just a little bit with a lot of people.

I don't know what is in your bald-headed brain because there is more chaos to occur. That was just—

Well, I know. Well, but we had the painters descend on us and then we're watching the little nugget again, which you'll, you'll, you'll hear her in the background for sure, um, this time. And we might pick her up and give her a glimpse. Um, but yep, so, so we got, we got the outside porches painted, the garage doors painted, the front door painted, the living room and dining room ceiling painted.

Yeah.

And the trim redone, the bedroom painted.

Um, our master bedroom.

Yes, the master bedroom painted and the downstairs bathroom painted. That was a whirlwind this weekend. So now we're off to Christmas.

Yeah, we're off to Christmas. But we won't be decorating this year. There'll be light decorations. I'm not going to put the tree up. I'm not going to—

You don't think so?

Mm-mm. No stockings, nothing like that. It'll be very, very simple. My Santa that I did not store away, because I didn't think he would fit in the things. I'll put him out, but that's about— I don't think I'm gonna do too much.

Why not?

Because I don't want to put it away in 10 days fast. I refuse to do that. If you—

oh, bad, bad dog! She said she's chewing the, the chair.

You're sitting right there. If you saw her, you should have said something. Just tell her no, no, no, no, no, no. Now you've ruined the second chair.

You ruined the second chair.

Okay. Something else we can get rid of. Yep.

I think it's after, you know, it's like we're grandchildren and granddogs. We've got a limit of 4 days. 4 days. 4 days before we lose it.

So it was Wednesday? Wednesday? That's right.

She got dropped off Wednesday.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Well, Wednesday morning, yeah.

Sunday.

That's the fifth day. That's the day this all falls apart.

That's when we start to lose our patience and lose our abilities to maintain ourselves and remember that all her actions are telling us something.

What's she telling us?

That she wants to be paid attention to.

Instead of doing the podcast, we should be playing with the dog? Maybe. Well, we started, we should have taken her out as soon as we got home from church.

Yeah.

Because she just peed all over the floor. Yeah. And now she decided to get our attention by gnawing on the bench, on the—

Stools.

The stools again.

All signs. So anyways, Christmas is coming.

Yay!

Santa is coming. Yay! And more stress could be coming. Yay!

Why do you say that? For other people. Yeah, well, December, the end of the year can be very stressful for a lot of people. Yeah, it can. If you got kids, you're dealing with trying to figure out Christmas, you know, and if you're tight on money, the kids still want things and you're not sure what to do.

You're figuring things out. But I remember when the kids were little, we still—

No, no, no. I'm gonna get that stuff on there again.

We still managed somehow to to do things. We still— we still figure things out. I think what's important when anybody does Christmas is you have to really manage everyone's— your own expectations, as well as have a list. Write the list. Now, I write the list, and I would allocate a certain amount of money for each kid. Or just even a certain amount of money on anybody I was buying a Christmas gift for. So we had 3 kids.

Let me give you— let me give you—

don't give her that! No, because it'll break into a million pieces in her mouth and then she's gonna have splinters. No, no, no, no. Okay, so the theme to this video today is the the word no. No, no, no, no.

You want to tell me no?

You can rhyme it with ho, ho, ho, no, no, no. But it was, so I wrote the list. I would have my 3 children. I would allocate a certain amount of budget.

You always try to make it even. We, we always got close, but that wasn't necessarily because, um, I think it was because we felt like we needed to spend the same amount of money on each child.

But sometimes that didn't always work out because one child would want one specific item that could be the entire budget, uh, and so, well, well, yeah, but spend-wise, that's what we would do. Spend-wise, I, I, we needed to have an allocated amount for each one so that we knew what our total was going to be. I know how much in general I was gonna spend. And to this day, I still do that. Now I just do it for my grandchildren. Now I worry about them.

You can almost saw her. Almost saw her.

She's attacking her bed.

Which is fine. Why?

Of all the things you can attack. So the funny thing is, is we asked our son, hey, what time are you coming home today? You know, maybe if you— if you— did you leave the key at the house? Because we could, we could drop her off later on tonight.

And he says, oh, hallelujah, would have been a good idea, but he'll be home at midnight. So that probably means it's a 6th night, a 6th day with her.

So tomorrow morning we'll be up again at 6 o'clock in the morning. 6:30. She has forced us to get up and go out for a walk. The first time she went pretty far. This—

all right, well, back to the list.

But anyways, back to the list. So, um, I think that's important. I think it's important. You have to have a list, a list of things that you're gonna get so you prepare yourself. Um, And then you always have like the alternative. If you didn't find the one thing you wanted, you'd look for an alternative. But I think of certain times when the kids were little, the list was very important. You had to stick with— that's not something you like to do. You like to look at a list as a reference guide. So I could give you actual pictures of what I actually wanted, but for you that was a reference. That wasn't—

What are you trying to tell me?

Get that specifically. And that would be the issue when we would go Christmas shopping. Well, no, we need to get him this. Well, why? We can get him this instead. It's just like the one he wanted. And I'm like, yeah, but it's not the one he wanted. This is— Santa doesn't interpret.

This Santa does. Sometimes I do. I mean, otherwise it's like—

Sometimes. And what planet did you say sometimes?

You all the time. I can feel yesterday just all over today too.

I think you need to just mind your course. We're here now.

Okay, well, we're here now, but you're still alluding whatever transpired. So you're picking on me. Okay, go ahead. Well, you're saying that I won't, that I don't, that I try to leave some things up to a little bit of imagination and interpretation of what it is. I don't do that as much anymore.

Again, I don't know where you're—

All right, so there's the gift thing. Okay, so what else did we do with our kids during the holidays to keep them entertained during that time, to do things as a family?

We went tubing. That was a lot of fun. Did we go tubing before Christmas or after Christmas? I always forgot.

I don't know. It was, we've gone tubing several times. And those have been experiences.

Okay. The kids loved it.

Yes, yes, they did. And we tried it.

We did the city once. We did the city. She's nowhere around.

Okay.

We did the city.

Maybe once or twice. Well, let's talk about tubing for a minute. So we would go tubing during the winter season, whether it was before Christmas, after, or whatever. We would take the kids tubing. We've gone up to the Catskills. We've gone to the Berkshires. The Berkshires was probably the most memorable for you and I with it. Imagine us, you know, we were also a little bit bigger than what we are now.

Right.

And so we, the kids are having fun, so we get in the tube and we decide to go together down, down it. Well, as you go, as you go down, you know, it would kind of go up a little bit, then you'd go up and kind of like smooth out at the top and you get off. Well, we, because we were heavier and weighted more, we got up some pretty good speed. And when we were supposed to be slowing down, we weren't slowing down. And we hit that top, and there are other tubes up there, but then all of a sudden there's, there's like this huge drop, and then the panic came on our face and says, I don't know if we're going to be able to stop this thing and not, and just go over the edge.

So put your feet out!

Yeah, but we stopped, we stopped, and we went down there once.

Once. But we, I, too bad that cell phone cameras weren't the greatest because, or we would have given it to our kids, because I think you would have just seen a powder of of snow going down that mountain. And then when we finally came to a stop because we put our—

Well, there was a powder of snow.

It was all—

Yeah.

We looked like snow people at the end. Snow on our hats, our faces, our eyelashes, the whole thing. Your whole head, your beard was like crustated with snow. That was a lot of fun.

You are really trouble today. Now you're chewing on the buckle of your coat.

Yeah, leave her alone with the buckle. That's her toy.

Okay, so, so the second— another time we went, we went— my brother came up and visited and we went to Woodbury, which was, um, we didn't—

I— we didn't go down.

Yeah, we did.

When—

I'm pretty sure I did. Maybe you may not have, you may have watched, but, um, we had a bunch of kids and went down it.

So we've done tubing, that was a lot of fun. We've gone to the city.

Yeah, we would take different trips. One was to the Radio City Music Hall and to see the Rockettes, which that was a mixed experience.

It was only a mixed experience for one person. And no, it wasn't him.

No.

Our youngest.

Noah, who owns the dog.

Must have been maybe 7 or 8 years old. And so we went to Radio City Music Hall. Now, I grew up in the city, so I can remember going to Radio City Music Hall with, with my mom and dad when I was young. So I thought it was a great experience. We should go. And again, buying tickets for 5 people wasn't like an inexpensive event. So we get there, everyone's all excited. The kids are all excited. We got very close seats, and they come out, and the Rockettes, and everybody's doing their—

5 minutes was good. Maybe 10 was good.

All of a sudden, he turns around and says, "Is that all they're gonna do?" And sing and dance.

And the attention span of the kids was about—

No! The other 2 were perfectly fine.

Ask them that now.

It was the 3rd one who who was like, I'm ready to go now. Like the first 10 minutes, that's all he really needed. He didn't need to go any farther. We did that. That was—

We've gone to, we've done the whole Rockefeller Center area and that's an experience. If you guys have never been there, especially during the Christmas time, the holiday time, you are like, You're like, this is about how close you are to people that aren't— you are not related to, is you're trying to like navigate around and see the windows and see the ice skating rink and see the whole thing.

I don't know why we thought that was a good idea. I really don't know why we thought that was a great idea. It was very stressful.

Uh-huh.

And I'm much better at clearing a way through, and I would say to my children, don't let go. You hold on, don't let go.

And I'd pull up the back. Usually a lot of times it was— I was way back by the time they were way up, because—

And I said, where's Dad? Ah.

Yes.

We lost Dad. Wait here.

So then, and we would usually try to make a couple trips, not a year, but we've gone out to dinner for Christmas time. We would pick like a steakhouse and that would be like the big dinner of the family and we would go. And so our kids got a really good experience of of some New York steakhouses.

They got experience with some really good food.

Yes.

We've gone to some places that had really great food.

From Chinese food to Spanish food.

To the Dumpling House, where that's all they served were dumplings, and it was kind of like a galley kitchen. Imagine a galley kitchen where the one side is the guy cooking and the other side is where you sit. And so you were waiting.

You were on a bar, like a bar area.

Yeah, bar area. So you were waiting for a seat to be available. And I remember there's 5 of us, so when we finally got seats, we were all in a row and literally like this, eating dumplings. But they were really good dumplings. They were worth the wait. They were worth the wait. So we've done that. That was a lot of fun. I think the kids still remember those kinds of things.

Of course they do. We've gone for Chinese food. I remember two different steakhouses that we went to. So it wasn't every year that we went.

No.

But it was a special treat with it. So those are the city adventures. And then we would usually, when they started to ski, we would take them skiing. We tried skiing one time. Yeah, we started way too late.

The fear of broken bones.

No, it was I couldn't get the damn ski boots on was my biggest challenge.

It was your challenge, that wasn't my challenge.

It was just, and then they were so uncomfortable, the angle that you would be at, it just didn't feel natural to me. Yeah. So we tried taking lessons, but that just didn't work.

We had this, he was a young ski instructor from Chile. And he was an extremely patient young man. He really was. He got the kids kind of off and doing, but he was trying to focus on the two of us. And finally I just looked at him, I said, listen, I'm perfectly fine. Don't worry, I'm just not gonna move anymore. I'm gonna stay right here.

So we made the decision that we would go and hang out and just watch them from time to time.

Have fun, enjoy themselves. Yeah.

It would have been something I think I would have liked to have done, but just started too late, you know?

You have to start when you're young, or at least your early 20s.

I mean, we, maybe if we were thinner and more flexible, we might have had a better chance at it.

I'm flexible, but wasn't thinner. No. Yeah.

It just was something.

We've done all kinds of things.

Then we've made a couple of epic trips with them during the holiday time. Yeah. We surprised them one year to go down to Disney when we flew down. So that was an epic adventure with it.

In more ways than one.

Yep. Yep. We already talked about that in previous episodes with the Hackey Guys.

That was That was fun.

But I mean, that was— yeah, we got pictures of those. Those are like those moments, those, um, you know, the good old days, as some may say, you know. Although I encourage you to create the good old days now, um, in the present moment as you're celebrating Christmas this year, you know, really take the time to feel and just appreciate what you have, especially if you have kids. At different ages, or they're only going to be at that point now, you know. So just really embrace it and enjoy that, that special time.

It's really hard to do. So grandmas and grandpas out there, this is probably where you guys come in the most. This is where you can really help alleviate some of that stress that your kids are going through with their children. You because it can be very, very demanding. And it's always good when you're a grandma, you're a grandpa, you can enjoy your grandchildren and you can go do things and boy, take advantage of every opportunity you can get.

You can go do things as a grandparent?

Yeah, with your grandkids.

Okay. With your grandkids.

I would love it if they were up here. When they were younger and they were here, it was always a lot of fun. Very chaotic.

Then it was— it also made it a point to like, you weren't just decorating the house or setting up the house just for you. Yeah, you know, um, this is the same way with Halloween time, you know. I'd carve pumpkins and I'd do things. Now I don't have the, the motivation to do that because it's just us. It's like, but when you do it for the kids, it's a different thing. It's a different feeling.

It's a different experience completely.

Yeah, so I mean, so I mean, we are, we're headed down there this month, you know, not for Christmas exactly, but we're in the Christmas season, so we'll take advantage of watching them and hanging out as the parents can go do some things.

I'll be watching Frozen 5 times in a row. I know.

It could be something else now, but it'll definitely be repeated. It'll be repeated. We don't know what the current—

What the 2-year-old is into now.

Right. Right.

Maybe watching Bluey all day long. It's gonna be so much fun. But yeah, so you gotta enjoy those moments, but the way to make it— try for it to be stress-free is plan as much as you can. Anticipate that things will go wrong, so bear that in mind, especially when you're navigating a lot of people. But if you plan, you can do a few things and it won't seem as though time is going to fly by really quick because you would have scheduled things along the way.

I mean, scheduled things to do with the kids. Correct.

Right.

Things to do with the kids from the planetarium to maybe whatever, going seeing lights. Um, but the objective is, is, you know, they're in their head, time is slow. In our head, it's going, it's going fast. Yeah. So I mean, for them, they're going to get bored easy. They're gonna, they're gonna want to do something, especially, especially after the break for them coming home from school, that 2 weeks that they're off. You know, if you can plan things to do, that'll definitely help with your with your own stress levels.

When they're younger, they get up earlier than when they had to get ready to go to school. But when they're teenagers, man, they sleep until 1 o'clock. You're like, are you ever going to get up? Are you ever going to move? Yeah, yeah, I'm getting there. So you could always count that those teenagers don't move as fast. Their idea of a winter break or a holiday break is they get to sleep in for long periods of time, wake up, go to the kitchen, get something to eat, and go right back to bed.

But they're still bored later. Yeah. A lot of times, unless they've found something to do. But yeah, always that first few days from school, it's great, but then it drags on a little bit. Then it drags on. But yeah.

Up until— Well, most of the time the kids are in— they get out of school before Christmas, a few days before.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, every state now is different, it seems, you know. So, but most of the time they get off a couple weeks during the, during the Christmas time.

Yeah. So it's always, it's always an interesting time. It's an interesting time for us this year too, because we are selling the house and it's got listings going on on January 15th. So I'm not interested in cleaning again.

After? Yeah.

So that's what I'm saying. I'm not going to be decorating. I might put on the TV the— You can't see her.

She was here. She was in the wood bin again.

She knows we're talking about her. So when we stop, she stops and looks at us and say, I'm not doing anything.

Yeah.

Like most kids when they're caught, I didn't do anything.

So what were you saying?

So there's no decorating this year. I don't want to have to put things out only to put them back again.

Especially since we've been, since our project right now is going through the basement and deciding what we keep, what we donate, what we're going to get rid of. And so you went through all the Christmas stuff already. So you've repacked everything.

Mm-hmm.

So now that's even more of a feeling. Do I want to take it back out and then repack it again?

No.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Like I said, I might do a few things, but I'm not gonna go all out crazy. It has to be very simplistic because I would imagine that the realtor will be here the week before the house goes on the market to take photos. And the house doesn't have to be lickety-clean, but it has to be presented as though—

We have to remove a lot of things that are too personal.

Yeah, photos and sand. So we're in a different stage right now of trying to get things done. So I'm not, I'm not looking at packing and unpacking and packing.

Okay, well, that's news to me. I thought I was decorating, I thought we were decorating.

Good luck.

That was it. No, that was a change. Must have been something you slept on, decided.

I didn't sleep on it. I pretty much—

Okay, you decided yesterday. All right. So what's the most important thing to think about during the holiday time?

What's the most important thing to think about?

Well, I mean, where should you Where should— okay, that doesn't come out right. So sometimes it doesn't come out right anyways. So I said, what's your best advice for a family during the holiday time?

Take deep breaths. Sometimes at least for me, I don't need help. Like, it's probably not in anybody's best interest to interfere. If I know what I'm going to be doing, if I know what I need to do— people always have that tendency, 'Can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you?' Probably not, because I'm—

then that's, that's when I get in trouble.

I'm more— I know what I have to do. I know how to do it. So no, you get regulated to do the things like setting up, taking out things that need to be taken out. But I think you just have to be organized, and as much as you possibly can, that doesn't mean you can't delegate.

You don't want to take it all on you. You know, you should have your You guys are part— no, but you guys are partners. You guys should share some of the responsibilities of doing things.

Okay, this isn't a 50/50 deal. There are certain things that I do much better, much faster, and much more efficient than you are. So I'm not going to allow certain things to go to make you feel better, to give you some 50/50. There is no 50/50.

I'm not looking for 50/50. I'm just saying that there's some things that I can still do. But if that's the case, then you just have to say, you do this. If it's something you don't want to do or it's something—

I usually do. I don't mince words when I say to you, go and do that instead. Very clear. You can sigh all you want. I don't understand what the big sigh is because what is it? Is it news to you? Is this something that's Haven't heard of before?

No, I'm just asking. You said to take on, for you to do it, for you to take on the responsibility of doing things. That's what you said was your best advice for them.

No, I said get organized, understand what you're good at, and stick with what you're good at. Anything else you can delegate, delegate. But if you're good at a certain thing, then stick to it. And if somebody keeps hounding you, can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you? You could just say, no, I got this under control. You can do other things. There are certain things you don't need to be connected in order to complete. And we both know the final objective, if I'm not mistaken. We know what our objectives are. So if you know you're having people come over, you know what that means, right? You know that presents need to be wrapped before Christmas, you know what that means. So sometimes you just have to take the initiative.

And most of the time when we do things, we, we're, we're doing different things, but it's all part of the same end goal.

Correct. How we get there though is completely different and subjected to—

Right, well, we may have different tasks to do. Most of the time I'll be outside doing something. You can handle the inside or I'll do a specific task inside to complete one particular thing, whether that's a charcuterie board, if we're having people come over.

No, that's usually putting lights on the tree.

Yeah, well, that's right. I don't decorate the tree, but I do the lights and then I undo the lights. And then I'll do the outside decorating. Yeah, that's what I do.

That's what you do.

Sometimes it's not enough, but sometimes it is.

It's more than enough.

Okay, well, on that note, we should probably edit this, but we won't. We switched that around this time.

I know. Okay, threw you off, didn't it, huh?

Yeah, it did.

Your little head was like, Yeah, I know.

All right. Change? Well, I hope you guys enjoy the holiday season. I'm sure we'll get one or two more episodes in before the end of the year, maybe. If not, enjoy the holiday time. And if you got a suggestion, let us know. And make sure you like, follow us, and share this episode.

Yes.

Bye. Bye.