Christmas is Right Around the Corner!

I think I've just set a new record for me. It's not even the end of September yet, and this morning I started planning for the Christmas season. Usually, Christmas doesn't even show up on my radar until around mid-December. Sure, I hear other people talking about it and can't escape from it in malls and stores, but the extent of any actual planning I've ever had to do in the past was buying gifts, which rarely happened before the couple weeks leading up to Christmas.

Why the big change this year? Mainly, because now most of my family no longer lives no further than 40 minutes down the road, and as such any visits require a tad more planning than they used to. But what triggered the process today, rather than a month or so from now, was an email from the music pastor at my church. She's working on scheduling the worship teams for the services for the next few months and was inquiring as to everyone's upcoming availability (no, I'm not exactly part of the worship team proper but I'm one of the sound techs. I'm much happier being behind the scenes where nobody sees me than up on stage in front of everyone!).

I then realized I should probably try and start planning for my first ever “trip to spend time with family at Christmas” to not only provide a better answer regarding my December availability, but because of a fear that if I waited too long all the lowest-priced flights might disappear. When it comes to a planned trip like this I'd rather not hold out in hope that a seat sale might pop up and get burned, having to pay more than I would have had I just bought the tickets early to begin with, before the cheaper seats sold out. Seat sales would be great for unplanned trips though, like if it suddenly became dirt cheap to fly out for a visit in March for example.

Anyway, I looked at some of the current plane fares online, checked with my family to see if it was fine if I made my Christmas visit actually be a week before Christmas (it looks like I can save at least $100 if I fly back on December 21st, rather than one of the days following Christmas Day), and now I just need to confirm that I can get the time I want off work. And cross my fingers and hope that the fares don't change on me in the next couple days.