Five Reasons I Won't Be Sending Out Holiday Cards. Again.

You see what I'm saying??

Thanksgiving is only two weeks away, which means the Holidays will be here before I have a chance to shave my legs again.  This also means that we are just days away from the annual deluge of holiday cards about to hit my mailbox.  Before we had kids we would receive, at most, half a dozen cards from the small group of friends who decided to breed at a normal age instead of an advanced maternal one.  Now that we are fully in the trenches of parenthood and preschool and people popping out babies at every turn, our year is sure to end with a bang - from the mailbox falling off of the house due to the overwhelming weight of all those cards full of smiling, happy families who got their sh*t together in time to take professional photographs.

Every year I have grand plans of sending out a fancy card featuring a beautiful photo of my family, and every year I find myself staring down the barrel of New Year's Day madly scrambling to pull something together at the last minute that doesn't look like complete and utter sh*t.  Some year, it will happen.  Hopefully before I die of old age.

Planning Ahead.  There are 12 months and 365 days in every year, but somehow I'm always caught off guard when November rolls around and I haven't made any provisions for things like holiday cards or gifts. Considering that Christmas falls on the same day every year, and that Hanukkah is usually somewhere on or around there, it truly boggles the mind why this happens repeatedly.  It's like Groundhog Day for holiday cards.

My Husband.  The Husband patently refuses to pose for (or pay for) professional family photographs.  I guess he's damaged from a childhood spent being a subject for his Father's work, but he absolutely hates having photos taken, especially if they're posed.  Seriously, the guy didn't even want to hire a photographer for our wedding and, instead, wanted to just have candids from our guests.  Let's not even get into the sexual bribery I had to offer to get him to agree to the Monday Mornings series.  I guess I could spend my own money and hire a photographer myself, but nothing says Happy Holidays quite like a family photo...without your spouse.

Kids.  You know what's so annoying about kids?  They don't like to sit still.  This particular trait doesn't work all that well when a photographer is trying to capture four people, all looking in the same direction, without moving.

Money.  Setting aside the astronomical cost of postage these days, the cost for ordering some crappy printed photo cards online isn't such a bargain either.  And that doesn't even include the price of the actual photographs.  Theoretically, we wouldn't have to spend all that much money to have professional pictures done.  We could book one of the mini-sessions that last 20 minutes and cost $125 or so, but it's not like we can just roll-up in our usual wardrobes of "it looks clean" and call it a day.  Oh, no.  See, I would have to get my hair colored, because if I don't get rid of those greys people might think I am my children's grandmother, and that costs... too much.  Then I would have to get the Muffin Man's hair cut, and Chris's hair cut, and do something about the Little Lady's mullet, which would end up setting me back a total of about $100.  Then, of course, I would inevitably wind up buying a bunch of clothing for all of us because we have nothing in our wardrobes that even blend, let alone match, which would cost another who knows how much.  Lastly, the whole experience would stress me out so much that I would end up having to schedule an extra phone consult with my therapist to get a refill on my Xanax.

Time. You know what I don't have a lot of time to do?  Address 250 holiday cards.  Even if I did manage to convince my Husband to suck it up for professional photos, wrangle my kids, and get our sh*t together to take a decent shot, there's a very high probability that I would end up with a giant package of cards proclaiming Happy New Year 2016!!! sitting on my desk until Valentine's Day.  Unlike thank you notes for weddings, I don't think you have a grace period of a year in which to mail out your holiday greetings.

So, we'll be going rogue, like we do every year, and hoping that we can talk a family member into taking a halfway decent shot of us the next time we get together.  Chances are I won't be wearing make-up, and my kids will be dressed in dirty clothing, but as long as we're all looking in the same direction and one of my offspring isn't just a blur in the shot, I'll consider it a win.

Anyway, the one advantage to sending out your holiday cards via email on New Year's Eve?  Everyone is too drunk to look too closely at how filthy your kids are.