The holidays are here already?

The holidays are fast approaching, Thanksgiving is 3 days away, Black Friday shopping is 4 days away. Christmas is a little over a month away. Then the new year will start....
Where does time go so fast? We just sit around watching it fly by. We forget to sit down and take a few minutes to breathe, watch the grass grow, the wind blow, our kids grow out of their shoes.

We don't have a lot of money here, and won't for quite a while.... but the holidays always put me in a giving mood. Last year I picked up a couple gift cards for my garbage men to McDonald's and Ruby Tuesdays, and ended up giving them to a man and his dog sitting in front of Walmart. I know there are a lot of scammers out there, but he was not one of them, he was a well known, nice, homeless man from the area. It felt good. My son likes to give his change to the bell ringers, he knows we don't have much and scrape to get by, but we are scraping by and not everyone is....

So this year, I found a website ( had found it earlier this year actually, and just came back across it ).... it is www.anysoldier.com they have a where to send link with a list of soldiers ( the direct link to the list is in my support the troops links on where to send ). I was browsing through the lists, and clicking here and there to view some requests, I think this year I may request an address, and pick up some movies, and a few odds and ends like Christmas lights, on sale while I am out shopping on the after Thanksgiving sales, packing up a few books that I have read and can pass on. On sale items, but something none the less. Maybe get ambitious and make some home made cards for the troops to send to friends and family and let my kids and sister write letters and color pictures to include in the box as well.... They also have a nice 2008 calendar that the money is used to keep the website running, I think we may be giving those for Christmas presents this year to the in-laws, my mom, and one to hang up here at home.

I think that with the stores preparing for the holidays in July makes some of us forget what the holidays are about. It's not the presents or the number of lights that we have up, or who gets on TV for the coolest light show. It is a time for thinking about others. Some stores are already playing Christmas music- they started before Halloween, I like Thanksgiving the food, the friends and family, just being thankful we are all here to share it together, I want to enjoy that before I start thinking about Christmas. But commercialization of the holidays is making that harder and harder to do. It is sad. Maybe that is why I get into the giving mood, because I hate it all being pushed on me to buy more and spend more, and be the most decorated. I don't know. I just want to do something nice for someone else, someone I don't even know.