'Tis the Season for Forced Family Outings

So this year, I had some vacation time to burn so I took basically the first week of December off to really clean my house for the first time in 6 months and maybe take a family day with the husband and baby. I ended up feeling under the weather with some of that time but I did make it out to the Yankee Candle Company in Deerfield, MA, husband and baby in tow. Let's start from the very beginning, a very good place to start. I have been wanting to go to Yankee Candle during the holidays for years now... and this was going to be my our year. Our morning could have been better and it would have been very easy to just call the whole thing off but I was going to be damned if I let ANYTHING stand in my way of my pre-planned, forced family outing... and you know what? Once we got rolling, it really couldn't have gone any better.

The Yankee Candle Company is about an hour and a half away from our humble abode. In order to get myself, a baby and a husband to Deerfield, MA in one piece, I had to do a touch of planning ahead of time. It's called packing the diaper bag well in advance, packing the car before the baby has even had breakfast. The plan was to time it juuuuuuuuuust right so that the #PropahBaby would take his first nap in the car on the way there. I should mention that the baby I call mine, well, he isn't a huge fan of napping. Husband and I were counting on a half hour nap, then possibly having to stop when he woke up about half way there. You guys, my son slept the entire way there! He awoke inside a building, that one can only describe as an assault on the senses, in the best way possible. We fed him on a decorative couch (classy) and hit the ground running.

We smelled all the scents and after some long debates, we brought home $70 worth of Yankee candles. It was collaborative and while it's not something we would do every day, it was certainly fun this day. The premises is quite expansive so while there are well lit candle areas, there are also dark corners where you can have ornaments personalized (which of course we did), watch a creepy animatronic jug band sing songs (no lie) and of course, the piece de resistance, pictures with Santa (no tears, a success!). We had a really fun day, got a decent family picture, made some good memories and I was forced to talk to my husband one on one for 3 hours round trip, so I would also call it a bonding experience! ;-). PS. My son slept the entire way home too. The stars aligned on this one, folks.

What have you forced your family to do this Holiday Season?