Holiday Mood and decorations

This is a weird holiday season, for me anyway. I'm trying to get into it for the kids' sake, but it is very hard to make your self feel something you aren't feeling. We did decorate the front window. I'm trying to get the downstairs clean enough to put out the indoor decorations. We made snowflakes to hang around the house. They're easy enough to do that even Timothy can use kid scissors to make his own. And Leanna picked out a girl and boy toy to donate to the bin at the bank. Justin would have picked out the boy toy this year but he was sleeping. Next year Timothy will be big enough to pick out a third toy too. It's just dollar store toys, but hopefully I'm still imparting the idea that we have a duty to help others, especially(but not limited to) around the holidays. That's really important to me. I'm not sure why, I guess because it'd be nice to have help myself, so I figure people worse off than us could use it even more. It gives a strong motivation to help others. I really think it goes beyond just the physical needs or paying bills-sometimes somebody helping you out is a mental boost more than anything. And that's necessary too.
I'll be making Christmas cookies with the kids and my sister/s? this weekend so that might help with the holiday feeling. It does help when I see the kids getting excited about something Christmas related. And hopefully Tom will have a weekend day off soon so we can go look at Christmas lights in our jammies with thermoses of hot chocolate! I was really disapointed that we didn't get to do that last year. Ahhh, maybe the mood will come as the holiday draws nearer.