I wish it felt more like Christmas.

It's eight days till the holiday, and I have absolutely no trace of the Christmas spirit. Part of it is that I'm being told Christmas is a holiday for children and that adults who aren't spending the holiday with children shouldn't get excited about it. Ordinarily I'd blow off comments like that -- I don't really agree with them -- but when the person saying them is the one person I'll be spending Christmas with, it's tough.

A big part of the problem is that even though we've been in Georgia for a month now, we're still a long way from being settled in. The painters come Monday, and once our walls are painted, we can start putting some stuff away and other stuff on the walls. We'll also have our new living room furniture delivered. Trust me. When you don't have furniture in your living room, it doesn't make much sense to put up a Christmas tree.

One thing I thought would help actually hasn't. We have a really cool sound system -- speakers in the ceiling -- in four different rooms in our house. As of today, I have my <a title="XM Radio" href="http://www.xmradio.com/" target="_self">XM Radio</a> hooked up through the speakers, and as I type this in my office, I have Christmas music coming down from the ceiling. I thought that would lift my spirits, but as of yet, not so much.

[caption id="attachment_693" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Christmas 2009 in Virginia"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/DSC_0154.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-693" title="DSC_0154" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/DSC_0154-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

Part of the problem is I'm missing my kids.

This is the first Christmas that both Pauline and Virgile have been overseas, and with the move, we haven't had a whole lot of contact with them the last month or two. I'm happy that Pauline, Ryan and Maddie are using some vacation time to fly from Indonesia to Greece to spend Christmas with Virgile and Sterling, but I really miss them.

As I wrote yesterday, last Christmas was a lot of fun in Virginia with the kids.

I think I just need to try and figure out a way to help Nicole have a little more Christmas spirit.

That would definitely make me feel better.