Page 29 2025 Home For The Holidays Lincoln Daily News where you can get 2-3 meals out of it, one or two carbs, one veggie and one fruit and consider buying premade rolls. • Consider buying premade meals that you heat up or go out to dinner. With the premade meals done for you, you can still add that favorite family heirloom dish without the stress of cooking everything else. Simply turn on the oven, insert, and heat. • If you have some additional weeks for planning, ask friends or relatives to come over and help pre-cook part of the meal and use your freezer so that all you have to do is pull out, thaw and heat. This will add to your joy of being with the kids by reducing the time of prep while the kid(s) are there. • If you really feel like you need to use grandma’s china, just because you always have, then use it. But maybe only use the plates for dinner or just the smaller plates for the desserts and fill in with the nice plastic serving utensils and the easy to heat/serve foil ware. This will cut down on cleaning up and save you from having to spend the next two days loading and unloading the dishwasher long after everyone is gone. And by all means, DO NOT wash the plasticware. Give yourself a little grace and have your recycled trash cans ready and give back to the earth that way! This will give you more quality time with your kid(s) and lessen the stress on you. Yes, it may cost more money in the long run, but did you consider all the time it will take away from your kids? • So now the elephant in the room! Gifts!! If you have not had this conversation with your spouse and kids, it’s not too late. You need to set boundaries in an open conversation with
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